Republicans to Face Struggle for Party’s Soul

Newt Gingrich’s sudden fall as House speaker crystallized an ideological struggle within the GOP that is likely to grow more intense, not less, with his departure.

Much like Democrats in the 1980s, the GOP today is riven between two camps with diametrical visions of how to rebuild a national political majority. One argues that the party must move to mobilize its base by drawing sharper ideological lines of distinction with the opposition.

“Boldness is the key; timidity doesn’t work,” likely GOP presidential contender Steve Forbes insisted last week in language echoing the arguments of liberals after Democrat Jimmy Carter fell to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Much like the Democratic centrists of the 1980s, more moderate Republicans today point toward evidence that their party is alienating voters in the center--the pivotal swing vote that decides national elections. But no party accepts that message easily: Bill Clinton and other moderates couldn’t convince the Democrats to change course until they had suffered consecutive landslide presidential defeats in 1980, ’84 and ’88.

With a beachhead in the governorships--and a potentially attractive presidential standard-bearer in Texas Gov. George W. Bush--Republican centrists may be in a somewhat stronger position to press their case than their Democratic counterparts were. But they have taken few steps to organize or craft an identifiable national agenda and are still distinctly a minority voice in their party. If anything, as the GOP both absorbs the shock of 1998 and prepares for the presidential battle of 2000, the demands for ideological purity could grow more intense.

“It seems to me that all the things that have gotten them in trouble since 1994 are going to flourish,” says Democratic pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, who helped design the 1992 “New Democrat” message Clinton employed to redirect his party.

Gingrich Seen as Unreliable ‘Squish’

Nothing better measures the centrifugal pressure in the GOP than the fact that Gingrich, who embodied the conservative revolution for over a decade, had come to be seen by younger conservatives as an unreliable “squish” too willing to compromise with Clinton. Gingrich came to Washington to articulate the principles of Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan, but in his turbulent last two years he reluctantly validated the wisdom of 19th century playwright Georg Buchner, who ruefully declared that revolutions always devour their young.

Over the last 18 months, the ostensible argument over direction inside the GOP hasn’t been much of a contest.

Ever since the 1997 balanced-budget deal with President Clinton provoked a sharp backlash from conservatives, almost all of the pressure on Gingrich and other GOP congressional leaders has been to move toward a more ideologically ardent position.

Even as Congress completed the balanced-budget deal, junior House conservatives organized an aborted coup against Gingrich. Last winter, social conservative leader James Dobson threatened to bolt the party if it didn’t move more aggressively on cultural issues.

In response to that ferment, Republicans in Congress measurably moved right. After reaching deals with Clinton on welfare, health insurance, the minimum wage and then the budget from mid-1996 through mid-1997, the GOP reversed course and systematically blocked his proposals. And, most importantly, House leaders responded to the outrage in their base over Clinton’s affair with Monica S. Lewinsky by moving forward with an impeachment inquiry against the president, despite polls showing enormous resistance from the public.

Failure to Press Large Tax Cut

Yet none of this silenced the criticism from the right, particularly after GOP leaders failed to pass a large tax cut this fall and then negotiated a final spending deal with Clinton that conservatives denounced as a capitulation to his agenda. After the party’s losses last week, the tension erupted in a geyser of discontent that swept Gingrich away.

Since Tuesday’s election, the GOP’s loudest voices have all belonged to conservatives blaming the defeat on the party’s failure to draw sharper contrasts with Democrats. The final ballots hadn’t even been counted in some places before Forbes fired off a memo demanding that the party now pass massive tax cuts, school vouchers and a fundamental restructuring of Social Security to create individual investment accounts; later in the week, he suggested that the GOP faltered partly because it didn’t attack Clinton’s ethics sharply enough.

Conservatives can point to some evidence for their case. Turnout this year among religious conservatives dipped to 13% of the electorate, down from 15% in 1994 and 17% in 1996. Overall, voters who called themselves conservative constituted 31% of voters last week, down significantly from 37% in 1994.

Yet most evidence suggests that the GOP’s largest problem is with voters in the center of the electorate. No Democrat carried independent voters in a presidential election from 1968 to 1988; Clinton has carried a plurality of them in his past two campaigns.

In last week’s congressional voting, another key swing group--voters who describe themselves as moderates, regardless of their party affiliation--preferred Democrats over Republicans by 11 percentage points. In several socially moderate coastal states, particularly New York and California, the bottom fell out for the GOP with centrist voters.

Moreover, even if congressional Republicans wanted to pursue the ideologically ambitious agenda conservatives are demanding, they would face enormous difficulty marshaling the votes to pass it.

In the last Congress, defections from moderate Republicans killed conservative proposals to ban federal affirmative action programs, create a nationwide test of school vouchers and retrench the Endangered Species Act. Several conservative priorities that did pass the House, such as legislation scrapping the federal tax code by 2002, died in the Senate without a vote.

These obstacles will only intensify now that the GOP’s House majority margin has been halved and the Senate has been chastened by the defeat of conservative incumbents Alfonse M. D’Amato in New York and Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina.

Given the constraints of the narrowed majority, GOP consultant Ralph Reed believes the party now has to pursue a two-track course. Along one path, he says, Republicans must continue to draw distinctions with Clinton by forcing him to veto conservative priorities for which it can still muster a majority, such as a ban of late-term abortions, legislation creating tax- favored accounts parents can use to pay for private schools and perhaps a sweeping tax cut.

But along the other path, Reed says, Congress must shift gears and reach out for agreements with Clinton on many of the issues the GOP was content to let die in stalemate this year, from campaign finance reform and regulation of health maintenance organizations to initiatives meant to deter teen smoking.

“Republicans have got to respond to these election results by showing a desire for bipartisan cooperation wherever and whenever possible,” Reed says. “That’s a clear and I think undeniable message from this election.”

That sentiment may grow if House Republicans select as speaker Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, whose pedigree as Appropriations Committee chairman makes him a deal-cutter by nature. But finding the line between compromise and confrontation promises to remain vexing. Do Republicans pass a large tax cut and invite Clinton to veto it or negotiate a comprehensive agreement that divides the budget surplus between Social Security, more modest tax cuts and perhaps some new spending attractive to Democrats? And even if they could negotiate such an agreement, will conservatives, who bridled at the budget deals with Clinton in 1997 and 1998, accept it?

Finally, the shadow of impeachment looms heavily over the prospect of cooperation on any issue. In practical terms, it will be difficult for Congress to reach too many agreements with Clinton while it is trying to force him from office. Perhaps more importantly, it will be virtually impossible for Republicans to drive a message on any other subject while the polarizing debate over impeachment dominates the news.

With those considerations reinforcing the doubts engendered by the GOP’s losses in the election, Democratic pollster Greenberg predicts the House will try to give the new speaker a chance for a fresh start by pulling the plug on impeachment by year’s end. But with core Republican voters, particularly social conservatives, still enraged at the president’s behavior, any move to terminate the process without a floor vote could generate an earthquake in the party.

That’s just one of many reasons why the ideological tensions that destroyed Gingrich could prove just as treacherous for his successor.

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In His Own Words

Statements by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) leading up to his resignation:

Monday, at a preelection rally in Roswell, Ga.:

“I think . . . we have a chance to win some very startling victories all over the country.”

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Tuesday, at his own rally in Marietta, Ga., before the election outcome was clear:

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The day’s results would continue “an ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the Democratic majority that Franklin Roosevelt created.”

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Later Tuesday, as the GOP’s poor showing became clear:

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“This is the first time in 70 years the Republicans have kept the House for three terms, so I think it’s a pretty good night. . . . I actually feel pretty excited.”

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Wednesday, in comments from Marietta:

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“Until we look at it better, I frankly don’t understand all of the things that happened [Tuesday], and I’m not sure anyone else in the country does either. . . . I think the drive toward becoming a [GOP] majority is now a little more in doubt, frankly.”

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Thursday, Gingrich issued no public statements, but from his home in Marietta he called House Republicans to seek support for another term as speaker.

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Friday, Gingrich’s Capitol Hill office issued this statement:

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“Today I have reached a difficult decision. I will not be a candidate for speaker of the 106th Congress.”

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Saturday, at a brief press conference on Gingrich’s front lawn, during which he confirmed he would give up his House seat:

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“As a practical matter, for me to stay in the House would make it impossible for a new leader to learn, to grow, to do what they have to do.”