Setbacks Lead GOP to Rethink Its Revolution

When Republicans retained control of Congress last fall, the party’s leaders thought that they had dodged a bullet and kept alive their conservative revolution. But major legislative setbacks have followed quickly and this week came the crowning blow: House Speaker Newt Gingrich postponed the revolution for four more years.

In the same breath that he dismissed his modest agenda for this new Congress as “not a decisive act,” the Georgia Republican revealed how the damage inflicted on the conservative spirit has dampened the once-vibrant elan of the right. “I would recommend [that] we do the next ‘contract with America’ in the year 2000 and we say to the country: ‘Give us a president, a House and a Senate, and this is what we’ll do in the first six months of 2001. . . .’ We learned the limitations in contract one.”

Gingrich’s concession, made at the start of the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference here, which ends today, only served to confirm the misgivings of many conservative activists since the recent legislative defeats of two of the mainstays of their agenda--constitutional amendments to impose term limits and mandate a balanced budget. Once confident that, given President Clinton’s proclamation that big government has ended, they could dominate the national debate with their own creed, many now protest what they view as a departure from principle by the GOP congressional leadership.

The Republican high command on Capitol Hill has “lost its verve and nerve,” 1996 presidential candidate Steve Forbes charged at Friday’s conference session. Ridiculing the limited legislative ambitions that GOP leaders have set for themselves for now, Forbes jeered: “I know what they are going to have--a new tax credit for kids who clean their rooms once a week.”

Some who heard Gingrich’s comments attributed the Georgia lawmaker’s attitude to the ethical violations that led to a reprimand by the House in January and a fine of $300,000. “That really tarnished his reputation,” said Emory University political scientist Merle Black.

But Republican Senate leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, though unscathed by scandal, has been just as cautious as Gingrich. And their comments have made clear that much of the reason for this stems from a desire to avoid the political damage their party suffered when their efforts to slash the budget in the last Congress resulted in a government shutdown. Looking back, the GOP leaders believe that their zeal to cut red ink permitted President Clinton to depict them as cold-hearted, ham-fisted extremists.

Earlier this year, Lott outlined his strategy for dealing with Clinton on budget policy, spelling out the change in approach. “We are saying to him, as we would say down home: ‘Mr. President, you first, sir.’ Let’s let him show his numbers and his suggestions.”

Lott then pointedly vowed: “We are not going to be demagogued in the future as we have in the past.”

That sort of thinking, however, increasingly disturbs staunch conservatives. “We were not elected to ride in the back of the bus,” Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition, told this week’s conservative conference. “This Republican Congress should be leading President Clinton.”

But such a declaration may well be wishful thinking on Reed’s part. Regardless of whether GOP congressional leaders lack the will to carry out the conservative revolution--as some on the right charge--it is beyond dispute that they are short on numbers.

The recent loss in the House on the term limits proposal showed that, with the GOP majority whittled down to almost a bare minimum after the November elections, it is hard for the party to get even a simple majority on some issues, let alone the two-thirds margin needed to pass a constitutional amendment.

Similarly, though Republicans gained seats in the Senate, they remain five votes short of the 60 required to cut off a filibuster and 12 below the two-thirds mark, if all senators vote.

“One of the lessons for the campaign of 1998 is simple,” Gingrich said this week. “If you want a balanced budget, vote Republican.”

But some of his critics do not intend to wait for the next election’s results. “We cannot rely on pollsters, pundits and Capitol Hill chieftains to do our job,” Forbes declared Friday. “We have to do it ourselves in a very American way” that involves grass-roots activism, he declared.

Forbes, a likely presidential contender in 2000, got a warm response at the conservative conference. But as interviews with the audience demonstrated, Forbes or any other conservative leader is bound to find it easier to win applause than forge a unified coalition.

Mary Perillo, a Stamford, Conn., office worker, and Eric Johnston, a Birmingham, Ala., lawyer, both complained about timidity among GOP congressional leaders. But both activists have different legislative goals. For Perillo, who wants to sell some stocks, a capital gains tax cut tops the list. Johnston urges an all-out effort to restrict abortion.

An analysis of recent survey results by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio indicates that such differences represent a microcosm of a broader rift within the GOP that makes the task facing Gingrich, Lott and their colleagues that much harder.

The main division is between those like Perillo, who see economic issues as paramount, and others like Johnston, who focus on social and cultural issues. But splits occur even within these two groups, the polling found.

Among the economics-first crowd, the majority are so-called “deficit hawks who mainly want to balance the budget. But nearly as many put their priority on cutting taxes to spur growth.

Among those who rank social concerns first, about half are “cultural populists” who tend to be more permissive than their counterparts, the “moralists.” For instance, 90% of the moralists oppose abortion, whereas the cultural populists are evenly divided on the issue.

Ultimately, some believe that the formula for success of the Republican revolution that Gingrich and others once loudly touted may depend less on zeal, or even substance, than on an element largely beyond the control of the party--the state of the economy.

“As long as the economy seems strong,” said Black of Emory University, “I don’t see much chance that they will get their message through.”