THE FEDERAL BUDGET : NEWS ANALYSIS : GOP Misjudged Its Leverage in Budget Clash

Appearing confident and accomplished only a few months ago, congressional Republicans ended the first week of the new year reeling from their worst setback since they seized control of Capitol Hill 12 months ago.

Their effort to force concessions from President Clinton by closing the government was clearly a flop. Loyal House GOP freshman who once had borne Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in triumphal procession were suddenly bickering with him over what to do next.

And the balanced-budget deal--the longed-for capper on their year of legislative achievement--suddenly seemed to be eluding their grasp.

The GOP revolutionaries were reaping the bitter fruit of a series of miscalculations. For all their reputation for adroitness, they had miscalculated the extent of their leverage over a president once dismissed as irrelevant, they had miscalculated public opinion about a shutdown and--to their amazement--they had misread the chief executive they apparently believed ended every confrontation by caving in.

“The goals are still the same,” Rep. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), acknowledged Friday. “But the strategy doesn’t seem to be working.”

The toll on the GOP, in the short term at least, was considerable. The strategy of shutting down government to force President Clinton’s hand appeared to have validated Democratic charges that their ascendant rivals are driven by harsh extremism. And the Republicans’ about-face to back legislation that would in part end the 3-week-old government shutdown seemed to brand them as tactically ham-handed as well.

“It’s never been considered a great plus to be viewed as an extremist, much less a failed extremist,” said Kevin Phillips, the conservative political analyst.

The GOP tactics seemed logical at the outset. The Republicans believed that Clinton could not tolerate the pressure from closing down the government--in part because they thought the public would blame the chief executive.

But while most people did not see themselves as personally threatened by the partial shutdown, they did consider it a national embarrassment--and they blamed it more on the Republicans than on the Democratic president. This week, polls showed the public increasingly blaming Clinton for the mess, but still blaming the Republicans even more, by a margin of about 10 percentage points.

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“People thought it would bring more pressure on Clinton and it simply didn’t,” said William Kristol, a GOP strategist. “That’s a point I think the Republicans need to rethink a bit.”

And news stories on the issue had changed the focus from a question of balancing the budget--which tended to work in the GOP’s favor--to the issue of whether it was fair to make 280,000 government employees pawns in a political contest.

The Republicans also believed that they had another powerful tool to force Clinton’s hand in the $4.9-trillion ceiling on the federal debt, which must be raised by the government when its borrowing reaches the previously authorized level.

Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin temporarily foiled the effort to use the debt ceiling as a weapon by borrowing from the retirement accounts of federal employees. GOP threats on Thursday to impeach Rubin if he attempted to use such creative financing again did not seem to have much effect on the administration.

Most amazing to Republicans, Clinton kept his cool. Indeed, in six days of closed-door negotiations, participants said, he warbled on about the details of federal programs--as if such discussions were his most fond activity and one that he could continue indefinitely. But he had no taste for the kind of compromise that the Republicans wanted.

In the GOP view, Clinton held firm because “he had the polls on his side,” said Rep. George Radanovich (R-Mariposa) and because his chief political consultant, Dick Morris, “told him if he didn’t stand firm for something he’d lose the election.”

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Some analysts believe that the Republican miscues reflect a habit that the GOP majority has had all year of overestimating its influence on government.

“It really is a divided government and you do have to share power with the president, however low your opinion of him,” said one GOP member.

And some believe too that the GOP problems grew in part from the majority’s delay in getting to the budget issue. Though the balanced budget is their agenda’s top item, they did not take it up until they had dealt with other elements in their “contract with America,” leaving little time to deal with complex and critical issues.

How much harm has been done to the Republican revolution?

The about-face on the government shutdown was an unquestionable embarrassment to Gingrich, in part because of his reputation for invincibility. Gingrich found himself making a heartfelt appeal for the plight of government workers--not usually considered a key constituency of the GOP.

“He once called Bob Dole the tax collector for the welfare state--maybe some Republican will knock him as ‘employment counselor for the bureaucracy,’ ” said Ross Baker of Rutgers University, an expert on Congress.

Such a turnabout cannot help, coming at a time when Gingrich also faces an ethics investigation.

Yet some setbacks were inevitable when the Republican revolution moved from the Republican House to a more moderate Senate and a hostile White House. And Gingrich seemed to overcome dissent in his caucus quickly Friday, losing only 15 Republicans as the House voted to return federal workers to their jobs.

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Even some Democratic aides agreed Friday that the GOP could bounce back quickly if it lines up a balanced-budget deal with Clinton--something the public clearly wants. Unless the deal abandons GOP principles wholesale, they said, such a step would go a long way toward establishing the effectiveness of Republican leadership, and would position them for the 1996 election.

One plan under discussion calls for GOP leaders to make Clinton a new offer containing concessions that the public would read as a clear signal of their willingness to go halfway. If Clinton rejected it, the Republicans then might try to broker a deal with enough moderate and conservative Democrats to pass the legislation.

Failing that, they could mount a public relations campaign to convince voters in 1996 that the president who stood in the way of eliminating the deficit should be replaced.

Winning this kind of public relations war may not be easy.