The Smoke-Filled Room: Pictures at an Inquisition
Hume, Sandy
by Sandy Hume Pictures at an Inquisition had grown tired of the attack ads: "A Vote for (insert Republican candidate) is a Vote for Newt." Being depicted alongside the least popular politician...
...Well, no...
...true-blue conservative Mark Souder of Indiana saw through to the political reality...
...An organization as relatively simple as a hospital auxiliary board can rarely reach consensus with more than about ten members...
...And the conventional wisdom is that Gingrich has been weakened within his own ranks: he has, after all, already made moves to return to his committee chairmen the power he consolidated in 1995...
...The technique is classic Gingrich, who knows how to appease his minions without sacrificing his own power...
...run against in 1998...
...As Forbes goes," one House aide quipped, "so goes Forbes...
...In tones of visceral fury, they talked about how Bonior had been at Gingrich's throat from the beginning...
...Didn't Republicans have But what irritated Republicans most of to hear Newt explain his side of the ethics all was that Gingrich had repeatedly discase first...
...Gingrich appeared to beam on Inauguration Day...
...The proceedings had been tainted, they argued, and the case against Newt should be thrown out...
...I know as well as anybody but he was an important two-shoes nev- that [the ethics case] is basically a load of ertheless...
...His unpopularity with David Bonior and other colleagues, however, was another matter...
...Swept away by the Rodney King spirit—"Can't we all just get along...
...If there was a rallying cry that seemed to work, it was that," says Rep...
...Committees lost size, influence, and, in some cases, their very existence...
...Bonior, he thinks, "may well have succeeded in uniting Republicans...
...Moderates have effusively praised Gingrich over the last two years, and most stood by him throughout the ethics proceedings, despite the fact that com50 March 1997 • The American Spectator The constant haranguing led to a backlash, with House Republicans eventually reaching the point where they were talking more about Bonior than about Gingrich himself...
...Gingrich's victory seemed a bit short-lived, however, when the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran stories about the taped cell-phone conference: Newt-backers were once again in crisis mode...
...there was widespread concern crap...
...But there's a part of me that's had it that his defection would embolden rank- with this guy...
...He had wanted to make the speaker equivalent in influence and visibility to the president, but his knack for rhetorical excess had dragged down the approval ratings of the entire Republican Congress...
...Being depicted alongside the least popular politician in the nation was aide, Leach was nothing more than a "god- "like a millstone," said one Republican damned, self-righteous goody-two-shoes," sophomore...
...Says Peter King: "It was impossible for him to get a fair hearing...
...By the time prosecutor James Cole released his devastating report, Republicans were already positioning themselves The American Spectator • March 1997 to call for an end to the bitterness, and for both sides "to put it all behind them" and move forward with "the business of the people...
...Gingrich couldn't find the same soft spot in the hearts of the conservatives...
...He had led Republicans to their newfound preeminence, and raised nearly $ioo million on the campaign trail in 1996...
...With Gingrich's magnetism safely in the Nixon-during-Watergate range, that may be all for the best...
...It's in the hands of God," Gingrich announced, "and the American people...
...Meanwhile, the party message will be constructed and disseminated through a chief communications director working out of Gingrich's office...
...That, of course, is precisely the role Gingrich has held for the last year anyway, and it is a role for which many observers considerhim best qualified...
...The first week of the new GOP Congress, for instance, he'd even denounced Gingrich over the alleged Nazi sympathies of the woman Newt had appointed House historian...
...D emocrats now claim to have gotten exactly what they wanted: a tattered Gingrich, even less popular than he was before, yet still around to 51 ing from districts where Democrats are strong they have more to lose from Gingrich's unpopularity than do conservatives from districts where Newt Gingrich walks on water...
...Republicans could abide a lot in the name of "bipartisanship," but they wouldn't abide a smugly victorious Bonior...
...He declared it "a joyous occasion" and "one of the miraculous events of the planet," and assured Clinton that, on the Capitol grounds—where the bright lights of committee hearings would soon shine — "Here you are among friends...
...The day before the report hit, Clinton was hanging a medal around the neck of Bob Dole...
...The involvement of the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee in handling relevant—and illegal—evidence immediately added plausibility to the claim that the ethics process had been manifestly abused in the execution of a political assassination attempt...
...For the inescapable—and ultimately unacceptable —result of going against Newt was to hand a delicious victory to David Bonior, the Democrat who had made ousting Gingrich the sole purpose of his political life...
...At the start of the ro4th Congress, he'd grabbed unheard of amounts of power for a speaker...
...But with enemies like his, who needs friends...
...The technique is classic Gingrich, who knows how to appease his minions without sacrificing his own power...
...Given Newt's unpopularity, at least with the latter, it was a good thing neither one had a vote...
...Gone is the Speaker's Advisory Group, a circle of top associates that had centralized decision-making in the last Congress...
...If it's [Jim] McDermott, we're golden...
...f it were pure politics that threatened I Gingrich's position as speaker, however, it would be politics that saved him...
...The timing was perfect, particularly now that Republicans could no longer claim that Newt's transgressions were the equivalent of a "jaywalking" offense...
...centrists: he had softened anti-regulatory bills, restored housing funds for AIDS patients, and halted an overhaul of the endangered species act...
...As one top leadership aide puts it, "Gingrich has fewer friends than he had before...
...Yet this last change perhaps illustrates best why reports of Gingrich's death are greatly exaggerated...
...You don't get many votes on your personal magnetism...
...Now his minions were pondering breaking ranks...
...More recently, Bonior had accused Gingrich's political machine of "raping" children's charities...
...Sure, Republicans wanted assurances that evidence of further wrongdoing wasn't going to emerge after the vote...
...grich supporters...
...the influx of talking heads will allow Gingrich to call a version of the advisory group for the decisions that really matter...
...The Speaker endured four hours of questioning from the nervous GOP conference...
...Gingrich assumed the power to name chairmen, regardless of seniority, and appointed the head of the House campaign committee, which gave him more control over the flow of campaign funds to members...
...The majority of Repub- missed the appeals of doctrinaire conservlicans — certainly enough to re-elect Gin- atives in favor of the increasingly assertive grich as speaker—had already decided that the ethics charges didn't constitute serious enough offenses to strip him of the speakership...
...According to one top leadership SANDY HUME is a reporter for the Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress...
...What we've got to find out is who leaked this thing," said one harried Republican aide...
...Without the help of Bonior," Souder says, "Gingrich wouldn't have won...
...But he was also wildly unpopular—even among the GOP itself Republicans If not for Bonior, Newt might have been removed...
...He has surely lost political capital, and keeping the fragile Republican conference together will be a tougher job this time around...
...But the question a critical mass of Republicans had was less about ethics than politics: Had Gingrich outlived his usefulness...
...It was Monday, and all weekend long, Gingrich had appeared safe...
...What did Speaker Gingrich know about her extreme views and when did he know it...
...It's understandable Repuband-file Republicans to jump ship as well...
...He had also taken to defending free speech on the Internet, and GOP hard-liners began whispering that most deadly of epithets: Newt is really a moderate...
...a mere ten would have doomed the Gingrich speakership...
...04...
...Only 48 hours before, a similar call for reconciliation had come from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, where President Clinton awaited searing probes led by Senate Republicans...
...he demanded on the House floor—after the appointment had been withdrawn...
...Jackass of the year" is how Pennsylvania's Curt Weldon described Bonior's antics...
...Peter King, who had started out in favor of pushing Newt aside...
...licans are already worried about 1998, Leach's announcement, coming before recalling how Democrats began morphing Newt had a chance to address the confer- some of them into Newt in negative ads as ence that afternoon, particularly irked Gin- early as summer 1995...
...The GOP leadership was concluding an all-out, two-week media blitz, and even though New Yorker Michael Forbes had been enjoying the talk show limelight as the first Republican to break ranks over Gingrich, party bigwigs weren't too concerned...
...The day before, Gingrich appeared before fellow Republicans in a cramped room in the bowels of the Capitol, with a stack of hundreds of legal papers at his side...
...Basking in the glow of a counter-scandal, Republicans accused McDermott of committing worse offenses than Gingrich had been accused of...
...As conference chairman John Boehner of Ohio put it, lobbying members to support a bill consists of "trying to convince people of why it's important to the mission and the party...
...Gingrich has also opened up leadership meetings to include as many as twenty fellow Republicans...
...But first thing Monday morning, Jim Leach, chairman of the House Banking Committee, circulated a press release announcing his request for Gingrich to step down...
...Moments before the vote to decide whether he would remain Speaker, Newt Gingrich glided off the House floor and flashed his characteristically devilish grin...
...Chris Shays of Connecticut, who once called him "a true patriot," denounced the ethics case as baseless more vociferously than any rank-and-file member...
...Internal party estimates were indicating that as many as sixteen Republicans were undecided, with two already opposed...
...In the io5th Congress, then, Gingrich will be the chief "idea man" for House Republicans, developing strategy from the safe environs of the background...
Vol. 30 • March 1997 • No. 3
