THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130030
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
In preparing to excuse his New Revolutionaries for breaking three promises, House Speaker Newt Gingrich is making curious use of the word sophisticated.
If a carnival barker springs that $10 word on you, put your hand over your wallet even if it is buttoned in your back pocket. He is fixing to pick it.
Three prime pledges in Gin-grich's ``Contract With America'' are: (1) a balanced-budget amendment; (2) term limits; and (3) line-item veto.
The first is dead for this year; the second is dying; the third, having escaped alive from the House, is scurrying to the Senate like Peter Rabbit fleeing Reddy the Fox.
Odds are Peter will be a much-changed rabbit before he gets to President Clinton. If he gets there.
Right here, for readers who cry that I should write about nothing but collards and dogs, let me remind you of my prediction two days after the Nov. 8 election that all three promises would die.
So far as I know, no other fool dared doubt that Gingrich would back down, as he is doing.
I erred just now in terming my forecast a prediction. Amid the variable jet streams of politics, their deaths were a certainty.
The budget straitjacket died because enough in Congress feared that they had better see if the Congress - and the people - were willing to cut the budget, including entitlements, before they locked themselves into the jacket.
They wished, Houdini-like, to have another key hidden on their persons. Gingrich hopes that the word sophisticated is the key that will free his henchmen from blame for the loss of the term-limit bill.
No matter what candidates swore during campaigns, most of them don't wish to have term limits imposed.
The vote on it has been postponed from March 14 to March 27, but Republicans are resigned to its defeat.
First, they tried to dilute the limit. Instead of three, two-year terms for the House and two, six-year terms for the Senate, the main proposal now is 12 years for those in each body. For the House, that would be replacing castor oil with Castoria.
In an interview Friday with The New York Times, Gingrich said that back in September and October, he had said it would be very, very hard to pass term limits.
``I don't know of any sophisticated person in September and October, including the columnists who are now writing columns attacking us, who believed we would have 290 votes this year.''
Gingrich often attacks the media as being elite. Does he now suggest that only a set of sophisticates among voters can comprehend what he says? If so, he'd better abandon nuances and speak straight.
Republicans defeated many Democrats by clubbing them with term limits during the campaign.
Those of us in the mass of the electorate know when a politician makes a promise and when he breaks it. ILLUSTRATION: Newt Gingrich
by CNB