No confidence
BARNES, FRED
No Confidence How Newt Gingrich's Congressional Lieutenants Have Begun to Turn on Him By Fred Barnes One by one, House Republican leaders signaled support for Speaker Newt Gingrich last week...
...If it's perceived Newt gives in on that, both the base and the members will say the leadership has to change," McIntosh says...
...You all have a good day now," Armey responded...
...That wasn't feasible, Gingrich told me...
...Gingrich's last best chance—not of recovering, but merely surviving—may be taxes, the fundamental conservative issue...
...respond to Republican criticisms with withering sarcasm...
...None of the other leaders had been consulted or even informed of the deal...
...Everybody was left out of the loop," says a GOP leader...
...But there isn't a single GOP leader aside from Newt who primarily faults the press in this case...
...This wasn't true, as reporters were well aware...
...What was Armey up to...
...According to their version of events, Gingrich signed off from the beginning on adding the two amendments...
...Dissatisfaction with Gingrich reaches far beyond his four senior colleagues...
...Boehner, the first to bolt, is bitter because Gingrich has blamed him for failing to distill a crisp, popular GOP message...
...eastern on Sundays...
...Majority leader Dick Armey appeared at Gingrich's side at a press briefing...
...Not by blaming the press for the disaster-relief fiasco...
...When asked about Gingrich, GOP conference chairman John Boehner ^^^^^^^^m voiced his firm backing...
...Had Shuster won, DeLay said, the consequences would have been dire...
...Then pro-MFN business groups muscled Gingrich and he knuckled under...
...He was elected in 1988 from Jack Kemp's old district in upstate New York...
...When it came to legislation on disaster aid, the GOP managed to take two responsible legislative notions—one to prevent another government shutdown and another to bar the use of sampling in the 2000 census—and make them appear cravenly partisan...
...one option just happened to be creating chaos on the floor to block spending bills they don't like...
...Asked if criticism of his unsteadiness in pursuing a consistent message was fair, Gingrich said: "Sure...
...The disaster-relief bill produced the final fracture in Armey and DeLay's already tortured relationship with Gingrich...
...Shus-ter lost 216-214 on May 21, but only after a herculean lobbying effort by Armey and DeLay...
...The precipitating event was Gingrich's decision after last fall's election to yank responsibility for "communications" from Boehner and centralize it in his own office...
...He pretty much checked out" in January, another member of the leadership says...
...there is to be no more jerking Armey around, blaming him, overruling him, not consulting him...
...A few hours before, he had been leaning the other way...
...So he's prepared to "listen a little more to the members...
...He has incredible strengths that far outweigh his weaknesses...
...Gingrich insisted the media coverage was "a case study in the sociology of panic...
...he agreed with Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council that it would be a mistake to debate the rancorous MFN issue, which badly splits Republicans, before the July 4 recess...
...He managed this by promising to install Boehner's chief rival, Bob Livingston of Louisiana, as chairman of the appropriations committee...
...All he and Armey were doing, DeLay explained later, was spelling out options...
...After Republicans captured the House in 1994, Gingrich engineered Boehner's election as conference chairman, the fourth-ranking post in the GOP hierarchy...
...That's probably a lot nicer than some of the things he could have said," the president told the Wall Street Journal a few days later...
...Had Gingrich really been uninvolved in the day to day disaster-relief bill...
...True, he expressed doubts about this strategy...
...He's also met with Joe Scarborough of Florida and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who were the ringleaders of a group that held an anti-Newt gripe session at the Capitol on June 17...
...Paxon was outraged that Gingrich overruled Armey and allowed Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Given Gingrich's unpopularity, the four leaders believe it unlikely that a majority of House Republicans will want him as their honcho and spokesman in 1998...
...In a written statement denying that he had refused to defend Gingrich at a press conference on June 17, Armey said he and the speaker "continue to work as effectively together as we have for the last 4 years...
...Boehner's falling out with Gingrich culminated a year of growing discontent...
...Over the past six months, Gingrich has deeply alienated each of his deputies by his decisionmaking and his behavior toward them...
...The MFN vote is slated for June 23—in the middle of a week that was supposed to unite the Republicans on taxes...
...That never happened...
...He hasn't raised the matter with Gingrich...
...The GOP leaders themselves don't...
...Four years later, Gingrich put him in charge of the Republican campaign committee, a critical job...
...Instead, Gingrich picked a Georgia ally, John Linder...
...Confronting Gingrich as they stood on the balcony outside the speaker's office, Boehner insisted he had always been a team player...
...He didn't, intentionally...
...He didn't answer...
...I asked Gingrich who had actually negotiated the truce with the White House...
...And he spoke kindly of a planned gathering of anti-Newt dissidents...
...DeLay says they "heard what they wanted to hear...
...That's also what GOP leaders think...
...I think he heard two things in Lott's voice: a petulant acknowledgment of Clinton's primacy in American politics, and a dawning realization of just how bad things may be for the Republicans on Capitol Hill in the coming months...
...He'd have gotten his bill to the floor anyway and perhaps won...
...Armey "sent a message back to Gingrich that enough is enough," an associate says...
...What bothers Armey, DeLay, Boehner, and Paxon is that this is what Gingrich always says...
...But he didn't try to block it...
...All he had to say was yes, and there would have been no story...
...There was one problem...
...If he preserves a conservative tax cut, he survives...
...Without consulting Armey, Gingrich acceded to Shus-ter...
...On May 21, he sought to get both provisions dropped, but Armey refused...
...Boehner learned of this when he read about it...
...If Newt were popular now, would this be going on...
...Elected in 1990 from the suburbs of Cincinnati, Boehner caught Gingrich's eye early on...
...First, it could be he understands that Lott made himself look bad and that, by being gracious, Clinton can appear the better man...
...Gingrich backed down, but Boehner's confidence in him was shaken, only to be finally shattered a year later...
...He (and others) also expected Gingrich to make Nussle head of the House Republican Campaign Committee...
...20 / The Weekly Standard June 30, 1997...
...On June 10, Gingrich agreed to a new strategy of sending Clinton a slimmed down bill ($2 billion or $3 billion, not $8 billion) with only the census amendment tacked on...
...This is unfair," he said...
...Paxon doubts that...
...David McIntosh of Indiana, who represents House sophomores in leadership meetings...
...At least that's how the dissidents understood it...
...By sticking to that, instead of flitting from issue to issue, Republicans would get the upper hand with Clinton...
...Shuster would have been "stronger if we'd tried to stiff him...
...He tried to sound like the old Gingrich, a man with a plan...
...Besides, Shuster could have been promised increased highway spending later...
...If you thought the spring was bad for Republicans, wait until the summer...
...even as he vetoed the legislation that would have gotten the money to them quickly...
...Perhaps, but that would be uncharacteristic of the president...
...He thinks he's got to have it his way or no way"—Bill Clinton took remarkably little offense...
...That was hardly a ringing endorsement, but it wasn't meant to be believed by reporters anyway...
...Odds are very high," he told me, that he'll be speaker in 1999 and beyond...
...It had the effect of "putting cold water in your face and saying we need to restructure...
...On May 20, he went along with a backup plan to drop the government shutdown provision, which Clinton had attacked, but retain the ban on census sampling...
...It's a useful principle...
...What's more, he and whip Tom DeLay met with two dozen House conservatives on June 11 and all but encouraged them to raise Cain on the House floor...
...Besides running the conference, Boehner would work with interest groups in the GOP coalition and handle communications...
...Months before Armey and DeLay, Boehner gave up on Gingrich...
...Neither rider Republicans had attached to the bill—one to keep the government from shutting down this fall, the other to block census "sampling"—had survived...
...But there's a deeper reason for Clinton's magnanimity...
...For public consumption, of course, GOP leaders say there's no serious disunity...
...And Bill Paxon, who runs the Republican leadership meetings, repeated his mantra that Gingrich will be speaker for as long as he wants...
...Jim Nussle of Iowa, another one-time Gingrich disciple, has tired of the speaker's inability to stick to a single message...
...This put Clinton in the remarkable position of complaining that money wasn't getting to the victims quickly enough—"Americans in need should not have to endure this unnecessary delay...
...Christopher Cox of California, the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, has been grousing about Gingrich for months, insisting he's not a real conservative...
...When Gingrich showed up earlier on June 17 for the first gathering of House Republicans since the debacle over disaster aid, he immediately changed the subject...
...Finally, at the June 12 conference, he suddenly announced full surrender...
...The statement said Armey hadn't spoken up for Gingrich in answer to a question because he "was halfway out the door with my back turned...
...On June 12, Gingrich abruptly announced at a meeting of the GOP conference that a deal had been worked out with Clinton...
...Can Gingrich recover...
...And at one point, Gingrich vowed to send the bill to the White House before the Memorial Day recess...
...Boehner agreed it should be central-ized—you know, all GOP press secretaries working in sync—but in the House Republican Conference, which Boehner chairs...
...Gingrich himself did most of the communicating, often in what a Boehner aide calls "brain farts...
...a floor vote on May 21 on a highway spending bill that, if successful, would have blown up the budget deal with President Clinton...
...He thought Gingrich should have stuck by Armey and should have told Shuster: Try to bring that bill to the floor and I'll oust you as chairman...
...To sit down and think it through and plan out how you are going to move forward, I think, is always a very useful thing," he said...
...Armey had been rising from his seat and was still making eye contact with reporters when he was asked if he thought Gingrich was doing an effective job...
...Shuster first approached Armey with his scheme to bring a $32 billion highway bill to the floor...
...We'd have gotten a terrible black eye...
...This infuriated Armey, among others...
...Though it is highly unlikely that Gingrich's men will attempt a coup in the midst of a struggle with the White House over spending and taxes, they are desperate for Gingrich to step down, the sooner the better...
...His four colleagues don't think so...
...says Rep...
...This entire flap has been a news media over-reaction to an exaggerated report of an anonymous event that didn't occur...
...Clinton likes being attacked about as much as anybody does, which is to say, not at all...
...By suggesting he'd been largely uninvolved, Gingrich gave himself an alibi and steered blame to Armey...
...As Republican popularity sank in late 1995—after the government shutdown and Gingrich's whining about leaving Air Force One by the back door—the speaker wouldn't take the rap...
...Now, Nussle is running as the anti-Gingrich candidate to replace outgoing representative Susan Molinari as vice chairman of the Republican conference...
...Worse, Gingrich blithely explained to the conference that he shouldn't have delegated so much during the flap over the bill...
...The impression was Gingrich had cracked the whip and, for now, brought senior Republicans who had been upset with him back into the fold...
...No Confidence How Newt Gingrich's Congressional Lieutenants Have Begun to Turn on Him By Fred Barnes One by one, House Republican leaders signaled support for Speaker Newt Gingrich last week after the traumatic GOP surrender on the disaster relief bill...
...However, just before that meeting, he told the Associated Press that Republicans were willing to drop both amendments, hardly an effective negotiating ploy...
...Armey buttressed the message by declining three other opportunities at the press conference to defend Gingrich...
...On May 22, Gingrich again advocated dropping the provisions at a leadership meeting, and once more backed down...
...There are two possible explanations...
...The Handcuffed Republicans By John Podhoretz After Senate majority leader Trent Lott took the occasion of his appearance on ABC's This Week to issue one of the more pointed criticisms ever aimed at a president of the United States—"He acts like a spoiled brat...
...What is unusual—and far more significant—is the deep distrust of the party leader by his closest colleagues in the leadership...
...Two days later, though, the plan veered off track when Gingrich decided to stick with a scheduled floor vote on extending most-favored-nation status for China...
...Newt did this entirely on his own, entirely...
...There were leaked complaints about shortcomings of Boehn-er's shop...
...Reasonable people can look back at that" and reach different conclusions, Gingrich says...
...But Paxon hasn't felt the same about the speaker since...
...Paxon was appalled...
...But if Republicans think he's caved in to Clinton, he's gone...
...I think he's getting a little bit of a bum rap right now...
...Gingrich relented...
...None of Gingrich's top colleagues believes he has a prayer of surviving as speaker past 1998...
...Proud of being a team player, he continued to defend Gingrich publicly...
...The one that rankled most was Gingrich's capitulation in April to Bud Shuster of Pennsylvania, the pork-mad chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee...
...Gingrich disagrees...
...All this was averted, no thanks to Gingrich...
...Don't believe it...
...Shuster appealed to Gingrich, who had supposedly left day-to-day matters like this to Armey...
...Gingrich is the most disliked politician in America, and there's no sign that his numbers are improving...
...Whip Tom DeLay declared that, despite threats of rebellion in the ranks, Gingrich "doesn't have a problem...
...He wasn't just zinging Gingrich for the way the speaker scapegoated him at a June 12 meeting for the disaster-bill fiasco...
...It would have shown we couldn't keep our word...
...Like Boehner, Paxon was groomed by Gingrich for a leadership position...
...it has long been his habit to John Podhoretz is deputy editor of The Weekly Standard and a regular on CNN's "Reliable Sources," airing at 10:30 a.m...
...Later that day, Armey, DeLay, Boehner, and Paxon voted against the bill in a spontaneous repudiation of Gingrich...
...It lost by only two votes...
...Actually, it was a total capitulation...
...He felt Gingrich was deflecting blame on him, and Gingrich was...
...He not only lost the argument, he suffered a worse fate: Gingrich never announced the shift, and so, when things went bad, Boehner remained the butt of complaints about poor communications...
...Even Boehner and Paxon, former Gingrich acolytes who owe their positions of power solely to him, have lost faith in his ability to lead...
...Gingrich even argues that the turmoil over the disaster-relief bill—Republicans noisily flubbed an effort to force Clinton to accept two GOP amendments—was "useful...
...Paxon is disillusioned by Gingrich's lack of discipline and loyalty, particularly the way he has undercut Armey, his chief lieutenant...
...It would have blown the budget agreement to shreds," he said...
...Like many rank-and-file members, Armey, DeLay, Boehner, and Paxon are all fed up with Gingrich, and they aren't just exasperated with the speaker's erratic, insular leadership...
...the bill would bust the budget agreement...
...Armey said no way...
...It is therefore worth wondering why he was so generous about Lott's outburst...
...After Republicans won the House in 1994 and kept control in 1996, Gingrich elevated Paxon to chairman of the leadership meetings...
...For the next few weeks, he said, the message would be balancing the budget, saving Medicare, and cutting taxes—nothing else...
...Gingrich claims he has no intention of dealing away any major provisions...
...Swiftly, Paxon began to gag on some of Gingrich's decisions...
...His explanation: "If you are losing, it's good to stop...
...McIn-tosh says "it was the decision to compromise at the beginning of this term rather than push for our agenda" that soured him on Gingrich...
...His strategy is to court rebellious younger Republicans like Mark Souder of Indiana and Mark Neumann of Wisconsin in an attempt to divide and conquer House dissidents...
...Some rank-and-file discontent within the majority party is normal...
...DeLay says he doesn't know either, but would like to...
...Throughout the spring, almost everything the Republicans have tried to do on Capitol Hill has gone wrong...
...Their worst fear is that he will linger as speaker through the summer, then drag them down with him should Republican members revolt against his leadership at the end of the congressional session this fall and depose him...
...Then, in January 1996, Gingrich told the Hill, a Capitol Hill weekly, that he would put House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich in charge of communications...
Vol. 2 • June 1997 • No. 41
