The conservative elite on the East Coast who take it as their job to rule on such things have decided to consign Newt Gingrich to history and install a new revolutionary as speaker of the House. In that effort they may be reading each other very well, but not the rest of the country.
The preferred method of disposal is death by a thousand cuts. Prominent conservative commentators such as William Kristol have publicly demanded that the leader of their movement step aside. That no doubt emboldened Rep. Peter King, a Nassau County, N.Y., Republican, to write in a conservative journal that the speaker was “roadkill.”
GOP staffers told The New Republic about the office pool in which dozens of Republicans and Democrats have placed $100-plus bets on the date Gingrich will quit. April dates are moving fast.
When 11 GOP members bolted from Gingrich to defeat a spending hike for House committees, Gingrich gave them a tongue-lashing–and they lashed right back.
The speaker has helped along the coup attempt by taking almost every wrong turn he could since he survived his re-election and sanction by the House Ethics Committee.
More Top Picks Best Lg Refrigerators
Unable to regain respect at home, he scheduled a trip to the Far East to have a chance to look like a diplomat. But he made the mistake of scheduling a stop in China without scheduling one in Taiwan. So he tried to make amends by putting Taiwan on the itinerary–and by bluntly telling Chinese leaders that the U.S. would fire away should China invade Taiwan.
Had the Chinese wanted to tweak the speaker they might have used Stalin’s famous 1935 dismissal of the Vatican’s might. “How many divisions does the Pope have?” Stalin sneered. The answer: No more nor less than the speaker of the House.
But the Chinese politely ignored his bravado, and thus were far more diplomatic toward the speaker than King and Kristol and any number of other conservatives have been of late.
Even his good intentions have gone bad. When Gingrich raised the prospect of delaying tax cuts until after a balanced budget deal was reached, the true believers in his own party shot him down.
The conservative elite are right about a few things. The House has been adrift, its agenda is stalled and Gingrich is, if not roadkill, caught in the headlights. A recent poll found that Gingrich is less popular than the Internal Revenue Service.
But the beltway conservatives, for whom all this is sport, are misreading the 99.8 percent of the country that doesn’t race to the mailbox the day The American Spectator arrives.
Congressmen report that they haven’t been besieged during their Easter recess by constituents spouting venom toward Gingrich. The rest of the country doesn’t feel great animosity toward the speaker–they’ve just written him off.
The problem is not just the messenger, it’s the message. The movement-style Republicans mistakenly think they will recapture the moment, and public support, by substituting another one of their own for Gingrich.
Who? House Majority Leader Dick Armey? It was Armey who immediately slapped down Gingrich’s overture for a budget deal without tax cuts. Gingrich seemed to have learned that the public was repulsed when he put the interests of the revolution before the interests of the nation. Armey hasn’t learned that.
Armey would have trouble winning over his own membership. Many moderates in the House are uncomfortable with his blunt nature, and moderates and conservatives from agriculture states are downright hostile toward him because of his crusade against farm subsidies.
So where else do they turn? Majority Whip Tom DeLay? Just a solid nose-counter. Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich? He’s already running for president.
How about Henry Hyde?
The true believers don’t seem to want a charmer, they want another bomb-thrower. But if they’re serious about regaining the public’s support, Hyde’s their only choice.
The respected chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who turns 73 this month, would give the GOP a gracious leader who wouldn’t immediately start scheming to stay in power for a decade. He’s a committed conservative, but someone who would put the nation ahead of the revolution.
Earlier this year Hyde dampened talk about him taking over for Gingrich. But things could be different now. On several occasions, Gingrich has ridden roughshod over Hyde. A few weeks ago, the speaker tossed away a partial-birth abortion bill crafted and approved by Hyde’s committee and ran another one on the House floor.
Conservative activist Jude Wanniski began circulating a letter to GOP leaders this week calling for the appointment of Hyde as speaker.
“No other member has your seniority, your reputation for both wisdom and integrity, and the sense that your ego would permit you to serve as `caretaker’ only in the sense that you would not expect to stand for re-election in 1999. The government does not need a speaker at this momemt who would have to not only slice himself up in the caucus to win a majority of the votes, but also do hourly calculations on how to win re-election,” Wanniski wrote.
So there’s at least one member of the East Coast conservative elite who recognizes that the way out of this mess is the big, white-haired guy from the Midwest.
If Gingrich insisted on hanging on, he probably could. The speaker doesn’t command any divisions, but he still commands the members’ parking spaces, and their travel junkets and other goodies that help retain loyalty.
And a chastened Gingrich is better than the alternatives–with one exception. Henry Hyde.