DATE: Friday, July 25, 1997                 TAG: 9707250044

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: Keith Monroe

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

MAJORITY RULES, BUT NOT WHEN IT BEHAVES LIKE THE HOUSE GOP

In sofar as politics is a spectator sport, House Republicans deserve credit for presenting a heck of an entertaining spectacle. Unfortunately, they are supposed to be running the country. For their performance in that regard, the reviews deserve to be of the thumbs-down variety.

When the Republicans were in the minority, it was perhaps necessary for a zealous, uncompromising cadre to insist on their own agenda and never yield a point. Revolutions are made by a malcontented minority who won't take no for an answer.

But the revolution bore fruit in 1994. The Republicans are allegedly the majority party now, but they can't seem to take yes for an answer. As the majority they've got to do more than burnish their ideological purity. They've got to govern. And that means creating and maintaining a working majority.

Retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who died yesterday, was a canny liberal jurist who remained influential on the court even as it shifted steadily rightward from the Warren years through the Burger era to the Rehnquist epoch. He was fond of quizzing his law clerks on the most important principle of constitutional law.

Stare decisis? The bright young aides would guess. Judicial review? Separation of powers?

``No,'' Brennan would tell them, holding up one hand with the fingers splayed. ``The most important principle of constitutional law is the rule of 5. That's how many votes you've got to get to win.''

And Brennan was a master at assembling five-vote majorities to decide cases his way. The Republicans badly need a William Brennan.

Instead, they've had three years of disunity and public mud wrestling, strategic folly and PR disasters. When constructing the Contract With America, the GOP took care to choose issues that appealed to a majority of the electorate. Since then, the party has seemed to go out of its way to highlight its most unpopular positions.

The leadership has picked the wrong fights and has lost the battle for the public mind by appearing to favor shutting down the government, denying aid to flood victims, attempting to rob the poor to give to the rich, rejecting campaign finance reform and so on. Among the more zealous members, there has been a refusal to compromise or deal, a willingness to take no loaf if a whole loaf couldn't be had.

This gigantic comedy of errors culminated last week when purists, scornful of Speaker Newt Gingrich's willingness to cut a deal with Clinton on taxes and the budget, tried to terminate him. One of the coup leaders appropriately enough was House whip Tom DeLay, an exterminator before entering politics. Old habits die hard.

But treating Newt like a bug won't solve the party's problems, just as the contemptuous dismissal of presidential candidate Bob Dole as a compromiser by the newer and more extreme Republicans on the block only helped to re-elect Clinton.

If the GOP wants to remain the majority party, it had better start acting like one. That means learning to keep its disputes behind closed doors, presenting a unified face to the country, articulating its goals clearly, picking its fights carefully, assembling majorities to pass legislation and declaring victory when successes are achieved.

More often than not, the party has done exactly the opposite. One half of the membership appears to be in open revolt against the other. No one appears to be in charge. Republicans have been fighting more dramatically with each other than with the Democrats. And instead of constructing a majority-size big tent, the GOP seems intent on running an exclusive club where insufficiently refined members are blackballed.

Apparently, the party thinks the most pressing issues confronting the country are the pittance alloted to the arts by the federal government, gay marriage and the capital gains tax. And when the party does manage to get the Democrats to bend to its will - on welfare reform, a balanced budget, tax cuts - members are so busy disputing whether the legislation goes far enough that they don't seem to notice Clinton taking credit for their victories. Maybe the GOP really is happier in the minority.

Days after his loyal lieutenants tried to do an Ides of July number on Gingrich (Et tu, Armey?), I received a letter in the mail from Newt himself. It begins:

``As the first Republican in 68 years to preside as Speaker of the House for two consecutive terms, I need your help, and I need it now.''

No kidding! MEMO: Mr. Monroe is editor of the editorial page of The Virginian-Pilot.

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