Gingrich Pays the Price

Newt Gingrich has always had a flair for drama, careening from political heights to the depths and back again, one day the soaring visionary and on another a tragic-comic figure. His decision late Friday to resign as House speaker was the sort of bombshell that was typical of the flamboyant Georgia politician.

But Gingrich had little choice. He faced rebellion from critics on all sides of the GOP who were faulting him for a flawed 1998 election campaign strategy that left Republicans with just a six-seat majority. By late Friday, Gingrich had been told that as many as 30 House Republicans would not vote to reelect him as speaker under any circumstance. If Gingrich had persisted in pushing the full House to a vote, he could have created the potential for a united Democratic Party to vault their leader, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, into the speaker’s chair.

Gingrich’s decision was the right one for Republicans over the long run. He had starred as the best-known Republican leader nationally, but he was equally a polarizing figure. Gingrich served as a lightning rod for criticism of the GOP, and occasionally for embarrassment. He was a leader of vision, but that vision was politically unacceptable to many mainstream voters. In that sense, his resignation is a loss for the Democrats, who are now without their favorite whipping boy.

Last Tuesday’s election results made clear that the speaker’s late-campaign decision to run television ads raising the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair was a mistake, and other than that issue the GOP had no real national campaign message.

Typical of the lack of focus was Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s run for the governorship of California, which centered heavily on issues such as abortion and fighting crime. Lungren was buried by Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who emphasized education reform and pragmatic problem-solving in other areas.

The Davis approach worked for a number of Republican gubernatorial candidates as well, most notably Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who won a sweeping reelection victory. Bush and others had appealed unsuccessfully for the national party to follow their example.

In the short run, political chaos can be expected as a score or more of Republicans scramble for leadership positions. It seems clear that it will take a moderate-conservative coalition to nail down the speaker’s post by Nov. 18 when the GOP caucus meets in Washington to choose leaders for the 106th Congress. A major obstacle to coalition-building will be the strongly conservative Republican groups and the religious right, which insisted that the GOP did poorly on Tuesday because it failed to push the conservative agenda aggressively enough.

Gingrich leaves the speakership with many political bruises but, in GOP terms, high credit for engineering the party’s 1994 takeover of Congress with majorities in both House and Senate for the first time in decades. However, a Republican Party that suffered constant infighting and turmoil had difficulty implementing its touted Contract With America and, in fact, making the House run smoothly.

Gingrich says he will continue to play a role within his party and in the country. What that role might be is unclear now. But it would be a mistake to think that Newt Gingrich will quietly fade away.