DATE: Sunday, March 30, 1997                TAG: 9703290001

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J5   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

NEWT'S CRITICS ARE WRONG TO PUSH TAX CUTSTHEY WANT ANOTHER ROUND OF THE CONFRONTATIONAL POLITICS THAT HAS GONE SO BADLY FOR HIM AND FOR THEM.

Newt Gingrich, wounded by breach of ethics, is now derided for being AWOL from true-faith principles of right-wing Republicans. His friends turned critics want Newt to pick a fight, draw a line in the sand and throw some Bill Clinton's way. They want another round of the confrontational politics that has gone so badly for him and for them.

Like McGovern Democrats, they enjoy the luxury of losing and of not having to read election returns. Thus William Kristol, erstwhile deputy to Dan Quayle, flails at a ``brain-dead Republican Party'' for ``cowering in the halls of Congress.'' Ralph Reed also applies the lash, exhorting Gingrich et al. to get right with his boss, Pat Robertson, and to repent of moderate impulses.

That's the trouble with knowing one is always right; it is so very hard to find people willing to take instruction. Gingrich, for example, offends dogma by proposing to back off tax cuts in favor of first balancing the budget. This is the most sensible suggestion by a Republican leader since Ronald Reagan brought back The Free Lunch, the ever-popular fiscal frolic.

The speaker, at once, would break budgetary gridlock, get a hold on the national debt and posture his party as willing to do more about balancing the budget than pass a show-and-tell constitutional amendment.

He would, moreover, align the GOP with the majority of voters who rejected Bob Dole's half-hearted plea for another round of Reaganomics; finally, he would avoid the danger of his party being decked yet again for wanting to reduce benefits for the elderly in order to subsidize tax cuts for the better off.

Now, to be sure, Gingrich once called tax cuts the ``crown jewel'' of House Republicans' ``Contract With America,'' but his party has since been weakened. There was an election. The Republicans lost and now peer through the mists for a presidential candidate other than bad-penny Pat Buchanan.

Their control of Congress, as Gerald Seib writes in The Wall Street Journal, is largely nominal; many House freshmen eked out re-election victories. They lost, in the process, the hard edge of zeal that still animates Robertson, Kristol and others who prize deficit spending as a means of shrinking government or, at least, the portions of it that do not benefit their interests - and as the most effective way to differentiate themselves from Democrats.

The latter point has surface appeal but is deceptive. No Republican for six decades has been elected president without embracing most of the programs that account for most of the spending. Reagan made his way extolling Franklin D. Roosevelt and, inappropriately, cited John F. Kennedy, another Democrat, as authority for tax-cut proposals like his own.

The notion that Gingrich's hard-line critics know the way to power is far-fetched. They are for the most part in politics but not in office; efforts to please them with gimmicky tax-cut strategies hurt the stature of both George Bush and Bob Dole. Their own standing suffered as Bill Clinton's deficit-reduction strategy worked despite cries that his tax increases would stall economic recovery.

Newt Gingrich is not quite bold or strong enough to say that giving budget-balance priority over tax cuts is the right thing to do. He speaks of a change in tactics, not of heart. No matter, it is the right course, and pursuing it would be good for the country and ultimately for his party.

It will be interesting to see if Bill Clinton, who fancies his own tax cuts, forthrightly champions the Gingrich proposition. Judging by his timid response to a commission's recommendation that the Consumer Price Index be lowered along with cost-of-living increases for entitlement programs, the president will be wishy-washy. He opines that politicians should not be involved in cost-of-living decreases. Would the same apply if an increase were recommended? Oh, heavens! Do pigs fly? MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu