ON DELAY, ON DELAY
BARNES, FRED
ON DELAY, ON DELAY by Fred Barnes WHEN HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH and other Republicans met with a delegation of social conservatives on September 17, the first piece of advice came from Paul...
...More than any other leader, he reflects the sentiments of House Republicans, again notably on impeachment...
...Please kill censure,” Weyrich said...
...Privately, Gingrich can barely contain himself...
...Then, a few minutes after Gingrich had gone, it dawned on those Republicans remaining that someone other than Gingrich would have to declare censure dead...
...His strategy, says a House Republican, is “to say nothing and tell people to listen to Tom DeLay...
...He’d be happy to speak on the House floor, he said, and drive a stake through censure’s heart...
...DeLay was unfazed...
...What makes DeLay unique as whip is that he and Gingrich sometimes don’t agree—and DeLay speaks out anyway...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...On August 18, the day after the president admitted a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, DeLay sent out a press release calling for Clinton’s resignation...
...Without trust and respect, they are as nothing, and any title they hold is a mockery...
...The speaker “has not told DeLay to stop,” according to a Gingrich aide, “but he’s not telling him to do it either...
...He sees himself, an aide says, as “an independent operative for conservative issues...
...The speaker has a formal role in impeachment and is seeking to hold himself aloof from partisanship these days...
...Gingrich balked at this...
...On impeachment at least, DeLay usually says what Gingrich thinks...
...He marched to the press room with the letter and, without a wink or a smile, blamed the White House for smearing Hyde...
...But his role in the House, especially on impeachment, goes well beyond that...
...And so he did...
...And if Gingrich and other GOP leaders begin to waver on impeachment, DeLay will surely try to firm them up...
...And he wooed angry social conservatives back into the Republican fold at a “values summit” last June...
...Because his anti-Clinton zeal is not likely to flag...
...The true significance of DeLay is that his presence increases the likelihood that Clinton will be impeached...
...We will not be intimidated by this kind of sleazy activity,” he said...
...Gingrich didn’t obfuscate or waffle...
...But it fell through mainly because DeLay stirred outrage among Republicans...
...At a meeting of House Republican leaders, also on September 17, he listened avidly as DeLay and Bob Livingston, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the idea of merely censuring Clinton...
...DeLay’s most significant role is that of relentless prod, pushing Gingrich and others to be more conservative and more outspoken on nearly every issue...
...Mocking his promise not to attack Clinton, Gingrich stuffed his tie into his mouth and bit it...
...The speaker has taken a vow of public silence on impeachment...
...Almost instantly, House GOP whip Tom DeLay stepped forward...
...But he’ll never trust DeLay with his innermost thoughts...
...Gingrich won...
...Had the deal gone through, Clinton and his lawyers would have had 48 hours to examine the report before its release...
...Nominally, he’s number three in the hierarchy, but he has enough clout to thwart Gingrich on occasion...
...When DeLay learned that Gingrich was considering a deal with House Democrats on this, he began organizing opposition among GOP members...
...DeLay and Gingrich have never been close pals...
...I won’t schedule [a vote on] it,” he said...
...Newt eventually decided to put everything about the coup behind him,” says a DeLay ally...
...Lindsey has claimed attorney-client privilege in refusing to answer Starr’s questions about his talks with the president on the scandal, and he probably won’t be eager to testify before Hyde’s committee either...
...DeLay didn’t notify Gingrich of his speech...
...He was the first to urge Clinton to resign...
...He rewrote the letter, edited the supporting materials, and insisted all of it be sent to FBI director Louis Freeh, not Hyde...
...And he’s always willing to be out front...
...In his office, DeLay has set up an operation, run by aide Tony Rudy, to keep members engaged on impeachment...
...Trying to tell him to stop wouldn’t do any good anyway...
...He waylaid the campaign-finance-reform bill for five months with stalling tactics...
...Nor does DeLay want to hear them...
...He was the first GOP House leader to zing President Clinton publicly after the sex scandal broke and demand Clinton tell the truth...
...Soon, he and Gingrich clashed again when the speaker trimmed the budget for the whip’s office...
...For a while, they were scarcely on speaking terms...
...It certainly wouldn’t have on the question of giving the White House an advance peek at the Starr report...
...And the biggest rift occurred when DeLay backed the failed coup against Gingrich in 1997, then admitted his role in it...
...Thus died the idea of censuring President Clinton now for his misdeeds in the White House sex scandal—instead of impeaching him later...
...Gingrich’s sentiment exactly...
...After Republicans captured the House in 1994, DeLay defeated Gingrich’s best friend in the House, Bob Walker, for the whip’s job...
...And he was the first to call for the release of all documents handed over by independent counsel Ken Starr...
...Finally, he declared: “This is not going to be over until [Clinton aide] Bruce Lindsey comes up here and testifies under oath about his role...
...His loathing of Clinton—his policies, his politics, his wife—is “visceral,” a senior Republican says...
...Of course, DeLay helped shape those sentiments in the first place...
...ON DELAY, ON DELAY by Fred Barnes WHEN HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH and other Republicans met with a delegation of social conservatives on September 17, the first piece of advice came from Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation...
...Next to Gingrich and Judiciary Committee chairman Henry Hyde, DeLay is the most important House Republican on impeachment...
...When Gingrich and DeLay discussed that subject later, the speaker was miffed to learn the release had already gone out...
...After the story broke on September 18 about Henry Hyde’s affair in the late 1960s, DeLay wanted to make public a letter to Hyde referring the matter to his own committee for investigation as part of the Clinton impeachment probe...
...DeLay performs as bad cop even when he’s not fully on board with the strategy...
...DeLay takes on jobs that Gingrich and majority leader Dick Armey reject or find too unpleasant...
...The office sends them talking points and proposed editorials, and schedules radio-talk-show appearances for them...
...On March 27, he went to the House floor and called on Clinton to stop stonewalling and tell the truth...
...DeLay is more powerful and commands a larger following than any other whip in decades...
...DeLay, humorless and glowering, plays a menacing bad cop to Gingrich’s good cop...
...This makes Gingrich nervous...
...Leaders do not live by polls alone,” he said...
...In 1989, DeLay backed Edward Madigan against Gingrich for House GOP whip...
Vol. 4 • September 1998 • No. 3
