GOP Taking Tougher Look at Clinton : Politics: House Republicans question the President’s credibility and sincerity as they try to chart party’s future role.

House Republicans are prepared to toughen their stance against President Clinton and to decry his economic program, judging from the rhetoric Friday at a GOP retreat held to chart the role of the party now that it no longer controls the White House.

Key Republicans questioned Clinton’s credibility and sincerity in a sure sign that any honeymoon with the Democrats is rapidly drawing to a close.

“The President has a way of sounding wonderful, but when you scratch beneath the surface, there’s nothing there,” said Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Tex.), who was selected by his party to respond today to a Clinton radio address.

House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he and a group of 50 Republicans scheduled to meet Tuesday with Clinton would demand that the President immediately submit a budget outlining in detail the spending cuts he endorsed in his economic message last week.

Bristling at the President’s suggestion that Republicans come up with their own specific recommendations for cuts in government spending, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) said: “He’s an artist at blaming others.”

And Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) said Democrats set the pattern for sharp criticism of President Clinton when they lambasted Ronald Reagan and George Bush during the last dozen years. “We’ll be tough, but civil,” he said.

Republicans, unable to overcome heavy Democratic majorities in the House and Senate without a presidential veto to back them up, tried to define their role in a series of workshops at a conference center near Princeton University.

Former GOP Rep. Bill Frenzel of Minnesota, now a visiting scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the change in role accounted for the harder edge in Republican rhetoric.

“With no opportunity to win . . . there’s no incentive for Republicans to be good citizens,” Frenzel said. “They can adopt a slash-and-burn policy if they want to. I think they will get tougher.”

Some of the speakers at the GOP retreat took a sharply critical tone toward the new President. Among them was William J. Bennett, former education secretary in the Reagan Administration, who stirred loud applause from the GOP lawmakers when he said: “(Clinton) wants the government to do more, tax more, spend more . . . and we could not disagree more.”

Adding a cautionary note, Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.) said he was concerned that his GOP colleagues were dwelling too much during the three-day retreat on past Republican doctrine on the role of government.

“We’re trying to relive Reagan and Bush and the public is worried about how to survive in a fast-moving, high-tech world,” Gunderson said. “Government must be a partner with business in preparing the work force for the 21st Century. . . . Business leaders are in favor of this and, more and more, they are saying that Republicans are into government self-denial. If we lost business, we are losing a very important part of our base.”

Gunderson, who quit his post as chief deputy whip on grounds that the GOP leadership was moving out of the party’s mainstream, clearly was in a minority.