Speaker Paxon?
BARNES, FRED
Speaker Paxon? By Fred Barnes In The Godfather, Part II, Michael Corleone says his father taught him one thing: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. It's sage advice that House...
...When...
...He's regarded as one of the most effective Republicans on Capitol Hill...
...But the next morning, Gingrich's advisers, Joe Gaylord in particular, urged him to follow through and force Paxon out...
...Instead, he is likely to play a prominent role in the House, only a different one...
...He was later dismayed when Gingrich, on his own, negotiated a surrender to the White House on the disaster relief bill...
...The others are elected by the 228 GOP House members...
...Paxon, first elected in 1988, will not become a backbencher...
...His enemies have someone to rally around in their effort to depose him...
...It's sage advice that House Speaker Newt Gingrich has ignored in firing Rep...
...so much so that he and DeLay wanted, at the least, to impose restrictions on Gingrich to prevent him from free-lancing...
...Gingrich has now created a formidable rival...
...When asked whether he'd be willing to challenge Gingrich for the speakership, he said he didn't know if that would work...
...Once a protege of Jack Kemp, then of Gingrich, Paxon began to sour on the speaker this year...
...Now there's an answer...
...He's now in a position to give an honest reaction, in public, to Gingrich's decisions and the party's triumphs and failures on Capitol Hill...
...In fact, it wasn't exactly...
...For months, the question on Capitol Hill has been: If Gingrich is going to be ousted, who is the alternative...
...Also, Paxon comes across as genial and likable on television—certainly more so than Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey, whip Tom DeLay, and John Boehner, chairman of the House GOP caucus...
...Why Paxon as Gingrich's successor...
...Ironically, he organized the campaign last January to save Gingrich from being booted as speaker...
...Of the four Republican leaders who met secretly with dissidents in recent weeks, Paxon was actually the least interested in moving to overthrow Gingrich...
...I look forward to helping advance the goals of the House Republican majority," he said in his letter of resignation...
...In a session with Gingrich, however, he tentatively offered his resignation, thinking it would not be accepted...
...At 43, he's popular with younger, passionately conservative members, having helped engineer their victories in the last two election cycles as head of the House Republican campaign committee...
...Just as important, the growing dissident faction believes he's bound to be available to seek the speaker's job at some point...
...Bill Paxon of New York as chairman of House leadership meetings...
...His only message for Gingrich was, "Good luck...
...Paxon left the meetings thinking he might be able to remain in the leadership...
...But Paxon made clear to the renegades he had lost confidence in Gingrich's ability to lead Republicans, Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard...
...Paxon won't have to encourage the dissidents, and he has no obvious plans to...
...Gingrich balked several times in his plan to fire Paxon, the only member of the leadership whose job depended on the speaker...
...But he won't defend Gingrich either...
...Then last week, Gingrich undercut Republicans who'd been arguing, as Gingrich himself had, against making the $500 child tax credit refundable to people who pay no federal income taxes...
...He was upset when Gingrich overruled Armey and allowed a risky floor vote on highway spending...
...Despite his involvement with the dissidents and their abortive scheming against Gingrich, Paxon did not intend to resign from his leadership post—until summoned to a series of meetings with House Republican leaders on the evening of July 15...
...He's from the Northeast, the stronghold of Republican moderates, and he's on good terms with them...
...At 11 a.m., Arne Christenson, the speaker's chief of staff, informed Paxon his resignation was indeed being accepted...
...Probably next January, when House members return from their winter recess and Republicans must decide if they want to endure another election year with Gingrich as their most visible leader...
Vol. 2 • July 1997 • No. 45
