In The Godfather, Part II, Michael Corleone says his father taught him one thing: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It’s sage advice that House Speaker Newt Gingrich has ignored in firing Rep. Bill Paxon of New York as chairman of House leadership meetings.
Gingrich has now created a formidable rival. His enemies have someone to rally around in their effort to depose him. When? Probably next January, when House members return from their winter recess and Republicans must decide if they want to endure another election year with Gingrich as their most visible leader.
Paxon won’t have to encourage the dissidents, and he has no obvious plans to. But he won’t defend Gingrich either. “I look forward to helping advance the goals of the House Republican majority,” he said in his letter of resignation. His only message for Gingrich was, “Good luck.”
Why Paxon as Gingrich’s successor? He’s regarded as one of the most effective Republicans on Capitol Hill. Ironically, he organized the campaign last January to save Gingrich from being booted as speaker. At 43, he’s popular with younger, passionately conservative members, having helped engineer their victories in the last two election cycles as head of the House Republican campaign committee. He’s from the Northeast, the stronghold of Republican moderates, and he’s on good terms with them. Also, Paxon comes across as genial and likable on television — certainly more so than Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey, whip Tom DeLay, and John Boehner, chairman of the House GOP caucus.
Of the four Republican leaders who met secretly with dissidents in recent weeks, Paxon was actually the least interested in moving to overthrow Gingrich. When asked whether he’d be willing to challenge Gingrich for the speakership, he said he didn’t know if that would work.
But Paxon made clear to the renegades he had lost confidence in Gingrich’s ability to lead Republicans, so much so that he and DeLay wanted, at the least, to impose restrictions on Gingrich to prevent him from free-lancing.
Despite his involvement with the dissidents and their abortive scheming against Gingrich, Paxon did not intend to resign from his leadership post — until summoned to a series of meetings with House Republican leaders on the evening of July 15. In a session with Gingrich, however, he tentatively offered his resignation, thinking it would not be accepted. In fact, it wasn’t exactly. Paxon left the meetings thinking he might be able to remain in the leadership.
Gingrich balked several times in his plan to fire Paxon, the only member of the leadership whose job depended on the speaker. The others are elected by the 228 GOP House members. But the next morning, Gingrich’s advisers, Joe Gaylord in particular, urged him to follow through and force Paxon out. At 11 a.m., Arne Christenson, the speaker’s chief of staff, informed Paxon his resignation was indeed being accepted.
Once a protege of Jack Kemp, then of Gingrich, Paxon began to sour on the speaker this year. He was upset when Gingrich overruled Armey and allowed a risky floor vote on highway spending. He was later dismayed when Gingrich, on his own, negotiated a surrender to the White House on the disaster relief bill. Then last week, Gingrich undercut Republicans who’d been arguing, as Gingrich himself had, against making the $ 500 child tax credit refundable to people who pay no federal income taxes.
Paxon, first elected in 1988, will not become a backbencher. Instead, he is likely to play a prominent role in the House, only a different one. He’s now in a position to give an honest reaction, in public, to Gingrich’s decisions and the party’s triumphs and failures on Capitol Hill. Just as important, the growing dissident faction believes he’s bound to be available to seek the speaker’s job at some point. For months, the question on Capitol Hill has been: If Gingrich is going to be ousted, who is the alternative? Now there’s an answer.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
