Gingrich’s Harsh Criticism of Dole Revealed in Tapes

Previously undisclosed tape recordings of House Speaker Newt Gingrich in candid discussions with his political allies reveal a series of sharply negative comments about Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader and GOP presidential front-runner, according to copies obtained by The Times.

On the tapes, recorded during 1989 and 1990, Gingrich and his cadre of conservative activists scorned Dole for shunning their crusade to plot the so-called “Republican revolution.” At one point, Gingrich described Dole as one of a “significant number of fairly senior Republicans who are committed to a minority values system in which being pleasant and being invited to the right dinner is more important than winning.”

Dole hopes to capture the White House this fall by harnessing the same voter frustrations that helped Republicans seize control of both the House and Senate last year for the first time in four decades. But if the conversations on the tapes are any indication, he is seen as anything but a political soul mate by the Gingrich camp.

Dole “frankly doesn’t give a damn” about fighting for conservative causes, Gingrich said on one of the tapes. On another, he characterized Dole as an out-of-touch elder overseeing a “passive, backward-oriented” faction of the party.

The tapes were made at meetings of GOPAC, the political action committee that Gingrich operated from 1985 to 1995 to recruit, train and finance Republican candidates for Congress. About 20 hours of recordings were obtained through the federal Freedom of Information Act from the Federal Election Commission, which is suing GOPAC for alleged campaign law violations.

Beyond the attacks on Dole, the tapes provide a fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of how Gingrich and his inner circle of political consultants and corporate donors aggressively pursued their quest to take over both houses of Congress and make Gingrich speaker. They include stinging critiques of former President George Bush, California Gov. Pete Wilson and other leading Republicans; a rare insight into the bitterly divided House GOP leadership and even some unflattering portraits of Gingrich.

To be sure, Dole and Gingrich enjoy a more cordial, cooperative relationship today as respective leaders of the Senate and House than they did when Gingrich was regarded as a back-bench bomb thrower who sought to topple the Democrats’ reign in Congress. However, the criticisms of Dole reflect ideological divisions within the GOP that could erupt under the intense pressure of a presidential campaign.

For Dole, who is embarking on his third run for the presidency, the remarks on the tapes cut two ways: On the one hand, they reinforce long-standing concerns among some party insiders that the 72-year-old Kansan is all too willing to compromise his principles while lacking the zeal, commitment and energy necessary to occupy the Oval Office. On the other hand, they highlight Dole’s differences with Gingrich, who has presided over passage by the House of massive cuts in government services that polls show a vast majority of the electorate rejects.

Gingrich said through a spokesman Wednesday that his comments were “private musings” at a time when he didn’t know Dole that well.

“I have worked closely with Bob Dole for the last few years and . . . we would not have passed tax cuts, welfare reform or an honest balanced budget if it wasn’t for the committed leadership of Bob Dole,” Gingrich said.

Dole campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield declared: “Whatever comments may have been made in the past, what’s important today is the real respect and even the sense of kinship Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich have developed in the year they have worked together to advance the Republican agenda of change against Bill Clinton’s obstructionism.”

The recordings are mostly of Gingrich-led GOPAC seminars in Washington and at a Colorado ski resort, but they also include conversations aboard a private airplane and a strategy session outside Gingrich’s presence. Participants included top Gingrich political advisors Joseph Gaylord and Jeffrey Eisenach, former Rep. Howard H. “Bo” Callaway of Georgia and GOP consultant Eddie Mahe. The tapes were made for internal use and were not intended to be released.

Once, while praising the stealth-like nature of GOPAC’s work, Gingrich noted: “I’m saying things in this room that I would never say in public.”

On occasion, Gingrich appears nearly prophetic on the tapes. Not only did he accurately forecast--and then orchestrate--the Republican takeover of Congress but he predicted two years before the Democrats selected a presidential candidate that Bush’s 1992 reelection campaign appeared doomed.

“If you wait for George Bush to figure out on his own what his strategy is going to be . . . we might as well just write off the next election,” he said.

Gingrich often expressed frustration over the inability of party leaders to formulate a strategic plan to deliver a Republican majority in Congress.

“You go to the Republican Party leadership, which is George Bush, [then House Minority Leader Robert H.] Michel and Bob Dole, and you suggest any strategy and only one of those three are going to understand it,” Gingrich said. “And that’s the president.”

Republican legislators who joined Gingrich to launch a conservative movement in the 1980s repeatedly were denied House leadership positions because of “an explicit conspiracy” by Michel and other GOP veterans, Gingrich said. It took nearly a decade to break up the dominant House Republican leadership team that Gingrich described as “a commitment to ineptness and to incompetence.”

The seeds of the GOP revolution were planted in the spring of 1984 when Gingrich and his followers decided to create a “dividing line” in the party and the nation by demanding no federal tax increases of any kind. This anti-tax fervor, Gingrich said, helped Republicans implant a national “value system” that gained in popularity and contributed to overturning a Democratic-controlled Congress.

“Dole and the other establishment Republicans were bitterly opposed to it,” Gingrich said. They “thought we were totally crazy.”

Indeed, as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Dole took the lead in passing legislation raising taxes by $95.8 billion in 1982 and he voted for a $164-billion tax increase in 1990.

By then, Gingrich and his troops were focused sharply on taking control of Congress. He identified 170 vulnerable congressional districts and embarked on an ambitious plan--never met--to supply $500,000 apiece to the Republicans in those races.

“This is a revolution in style!” Gingrich exhorted his followers. He added: “I’m taking a party which is historically not noisy, historically doesn’t have a lot of new ideas and historically doesn’t believe in empowering strangers and I’m going to change all that.”

This approach clashed head-on with Dole’s deliberative leadership style.

Gingrich described “two systems of behavior” that operated within the Republican Party: His collection of insurgents who deployed “an aggressive, risk-taking, confrontational, forward-looking kind of system with a lot of energy” and Dole’s group of senior lawmakers who were committed to “a passive, backward-oriented, appeasement mentality.”

On the tapes, Gingrich lambasted Dole’s work as Senate minority leader, accusing him of capitulating to then-Democratic Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine on important conservative issues.

Gingrich cited unsuccessful attempts by former Republican Sen. Robert W. Kasten Jr. of Wisconsin to insert tax-cutting proposals into legislation pending on the Senate floor. Gingrich said that Mitchell often persuaded Dole to accept “meaningless” substitutes to the Kasten amendments instead of aggressively fighting for such initiatives.

“And Dole falls for it almost every time,” Gingrich said, “because Dole doesn’t care about any of these values.”

Kasten confirmed in an interview that he and others were frustrated on occasion by Dole’s management of the GOP legislative agenda but at the same time he said that such maneuvering is a recurring problem in the Senate.

When Pete Wilson’s name was suggested as a possible 1996 presidential candidate, GOPAC advisors agreed that any governor of California automatically had to be considered a serious candidate. But their lack of enthusiasm for a Wilson candidacy was summed up by GOPAC consultant Mahe, a Gingrich insider and former Republican Party official, who said: “Boy, you talk about somebody who has the personality of a fried turnip!”

Asked about the remark, Wilson spokesman Sean Walsh said, “I’m not going to dignify that comment with a response.”

Earlier, Gingrich is heard on the tapes ruling out a presidential bid to concentrate on becoming speaker. But the Georgia Republican was chastised by Mahe for having abandoned his principles to further his own career.

“One that I’ve never forgotten,” Mahe said, was Gingrich’s “sellout” when he supported a nearly 40% congressional pay raise in 1989 despite devoting years to bashing the Democratic-controlled House for its lavish pay and perquisites. Gingrich, Mahe said, favored the pay increase to curry favor with Republican members whose support he would need to get elected to a House leadership post.

Mahe said that he scolded Gingrich: “Well, we all have our price and we know what yours is.”