Lunch Opens Briefing for D.C. Neophytes : Congress: Three-day orientation features conservative superstars as well as those who stirred the voters to a revolution.

“A revolution,” Mao Tse-tung once observed, “is not a dinner party.”

And so, when freshly minted Republican congressmen convened for an intensive political study session under the watchful eyes of party cadres, they started with lunch. Between courses, the new recruits collected reading lists, hailed their beloved chairman, incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), and threw a few bombs at that distant incubator of counterrevolution, Harvard University--which traditionally has conducted freshman orientations.

“Just think,” said Vin Weber, Republican activist and co-chairman of Empower America, the Republican group that helped shape the freshman curriculum, “if you were at Harvard, you could be listening to Michael Dukakis.”

Unlike Harvard’s orientations, which featured plodding government professors droning on about arms control and urban policy, the three-day orientation that began Thursday features not only conservative political superstars such as likely presidential candidate Jack Kemp, but those who helped stir the voters to revolution. The climax will be speeches by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and by William J. Bennett, the conservative philosopher and former education secretary.

The shift from Harvard Yard to a Baltimore hotel 40 miles from the Capitol dome is more than a simple change of venue. In the oft-used phrase of Republican leaders Thursday, it is a revolution.

Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, which is perceived by many Republicans as a bastion of the kind of “counterculture” values denounced by Gingrich, this year canceled its orientation session for freshman lawmakers. Its explanation: lack of interest.

“There’s a new day in America,” Kemp said when asked to explain the sudden demise of the Harvard program. “People want something new. They didn’t want the typical Harvard School of Government notion of what reform is.”

The conservative Heritage Foundation, which teamed up this year with Empower America, had no such problem. A total of 69 newly elected senators and representatives, all but one of them Republicans, accepted their invitation to what appears to be combination study hall and pep rally. Six of the seven Democratic freshmen declined to attend. The lone Democrat was Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania.

Over the three days, they’ll hear about “real welfare reform” from Charles Murray, co-author of the controversial book “The Bell Curve,” which argues that there are genetic differences between races that determine intelligence. They’ll listen to the leader of the Christian Coalition outline the “concerns of the pro-family voter,” and hear from other panels about the requirements for “building an enduring conservative majority” and for “making congressional reform work.”

On Thursday, nuclear scientist Edward Teller, known as the father of the hydrogen bomb and a driving force behind the Ronald Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” initiative, called for a renewed effort to build missile defenses. Teller, Kemp said, “is here to shine the beacon of the peace-through-strength movement across America.”

Edwin J. Feulner Jr., president of the Heritage Foundation, hailed the new members as “fellow revolutionaries.” He urged the new troops to consider Heritage, which lies two blocks from the Capitol, “the armory, the weapons factory in your battle for the American people.”

Kemp told the assembled freshmen that they were “part of the revolution” and reminded them that Republicans “are still the party of liberation.”

There also was ample evidence that a cult of personality--the boon and bane of revolutionaries throughout history--is developing around Gingrich.

Speakers looking for applause lines needed only utter Gingrich’s name, and the response was thunderous. “He’s an inspiration to us, a true leader,” said Rep.-elect Andrea Seastrand (R-San Luis Obispo).

As they gathered in this port city Thursday, several Republican freshmen wore lapel pins identifying them as “majority makers.” They traded gossip, including promised committee assignments and who, if anyone, would dare run against Oklahoma football star J. C. Watts, now a congressman, for freshman class president.

Many, blinking into the glare of cameras, got their first taste of Washington’s hungry congressional press corps.

After schmoozing with Watts and Oklahoma Rep. Steve Largent, a former Seattle Seahawks star-turned Republican freshman, Kemp joked that House Republicans should start a football caucus. Only one problem, Kemp conceded: Republicans have scrapped all funding for caucuses, ranging from the Congressional Black Caucus to the caucus on women’s issues. Kemp played for the Buffalo Bills before entering politics.