Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 2, 1990 TAG: 9007020221
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: STEVEN KOMAROW ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Gingrich, R-Ga., is the ideological leader of the Conservative Opportunity Society. He spent most of the 1980s engaged in rhetorical and parliamentary warfare against the Democrats.
Last year he hit pay dirt with his ethics committee charges that forced Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, to resign from Congress. As Wright went down, Gingrich rocketed into the No. 2 position among the House Republicans.
While maintaining his wonderfully hyperbolic rhetoric, he joined the establishment. He talks with Democrats about vacation schedules and even supported the controversial House pay raise passed last fall. Now, he's a Republican negotiator in the big budget talks.
But Bush's tax flip might be too much for him to take. The Neutron, as his friends call him, is fighting a political meltdown.
The tax issue is at the core of Gingrich's political being. He frequently attacks the "bureaucratic liberal welfare state" fed by undeserved tax dollars.
And George Bush is saying he needs a tax increase to get the budget talks moving and prevent cuts in needed government services?
Gingrich wasn't invited to the meeting last Tuesday when Bush told the top congressional leaders he'd go along with a statement calling for "tax revenue increases."
Apparently, when Gingrich first heard about it he couldn't believe it. A heated argument over the telephone with White House Chief of Staff John Sununu ensued.
Gingrich afterward tried feeding reporters the Sununu ruse that nothing had changed since Bush had started the budget talks with a pledge that "everything was on the table." But his anger made it obvious that he didn't believe it himself.
"I'm just frankly enraged," he said.
By day's end, he was telling reporters that Bush had "thrown an interception." And by week's end, he was distancing himself from the White House.
The president "made a mistake on Tuesday and I think it has been a severe blow to the president's credibility and a significant blow to the Republican party," Gingrich said.
"I do not think he has to raise taxes. I'm willing to stay in the summit but I'll just say flatly that I think it is an error to give in to the Democratic party," he said.
Gingrich says the Democrats forced Bush into reversing his pledge by refusing to negotiate, and says the president should have gone to the American people and told them that.
But Gingrich also states the obvious truth, that the Democrats weren't going to pull out of the talks.
They didn't even threaten it, and neither can he. There's too much at stake, and he's a part of the Republican leadership now, part of the establishment.
What Gingrich can do is maneuver to make sure he and his supporters retain some influence in the budget talks.
Gingrich's deputy, Rep. Robert Walker, R-Pa., reacted to Bush's statement last week by gathering the signatures of more than half of the House Republicans on a statement opposing any tax rate increase. Gingrich, wearing his negotiator's hat, didn't sign it.
House Speaker Thomas Foley, D-Wash., has stated repeatedly that Democrats won't vote for any tax increase unless most Republicans support it also.
If Foley sticks to that pledge, it could give Gingrich the equivalent of a veto. If Foley doesn't, it might give Gingrich back the tax issue which Bush's statement has so badly blunted.
by CNB