Big Top Comes to Capitol Hill, Sets Off a Political Sideshow

Three months after the GOP swept into control, 130,000 pounds of pachyderm, the Republicans’ beloved symbol, came lumbering to Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

House members debated which party claims the bigger clowns.

Why bother with the performing elephants and dancing girls on the Capitol plaza when you can watch professional politicians defy logic, asked Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.).

“Step right up and you’ll see Republicans juggle numbers,” he promised visitors to the House gallery, bracing for at least six hours of debate on the GOP tax bill.

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who followed Gutierrez to the House floor, said Democrats were simply afraid of being trampled by charging elephants. “They already had that experience in November,” he said.

Outside the Capitol--home to at least 23 tons of GOP lawmakers--13 five-ton elephants balanced on their hind legs.

“We have the outer circus and the inner circus,” said Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), as he went to greet Kenneth Feld, president of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which was celebrating its 125th-anniversary performance in the Capitol parking lot.

It took a House-Senate resolution to authorize the special performance. The plaza was roped off to the uninvited public, but about 300 local schoolchildren packed the Capitol steps at Gingrich’s invitation.

Eighteen animal-rights advocates--dressed in prison garb and elephant masks and protesting what they called the circus’ maltreatment of elephants--were arrested at the Senate steps and charged with unlawful entry and obstructing passage on Capitol grounds, police said. Circus spokeswoman Barbara Pflughaupt dismissed the protesters’ claims.