Start the Revolution
House Speaker Newt Gingrich points the way as the Republicans get their turn to govern
Within a day, Democrats were calling for a raise in the minimum wage and asking Republicans to specify what they would cut in order to balance the budget. "Twenty-four hours after we had a good [bipartisan congressional] meeting, when we were told we're going to cooperate, we had the Democrats reverting to a partisan defense of the old order," Gingrich complained.
But so far, bemoaning GOP budget cuts as mean and deriding GOP tax cuts as welfare for the wealthy is the Democrats' only strategy. White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta launched the counterattack against the GOP plan to balance the budget. "Are they going to cut Medicare?" asked Panetta. "Are they going to cut Social Security? Are they going to cut benefits for veterans? Are they going to cut agriculture?" The Clintonites--as well as allies like Gephardt--think these issues will reunite them with the middle class, which pointedly rejected their entreaties in the November election.
But the Republicans have no intention of abandoning the fight for the middle class. That could mean not only the revival of class warfare but also a bidding war over a middle-class tax cut. Democrats, says House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas, "are obsessed with disliking the rich." A cut in the capital-gains tax, he adds, is good for the middle class. "If someone doesn't buy a machine, then a worker doesn't have a job."
One problem for the Democrats is that some of them agree with Armey. Party conservatives favor a capital-gains-tax cut, while liberals--including Gephardt--vow to fight it. New Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota has proposed an agenda that doesn't even mention tax cuts and focuses instead on issues such as incremental health care reform. The White House intends to rally the troops around its "Middle-Class Bill of Rights." Even Gingrich admits liking the idea of tax breaks for college tuition. But some Democrats flinch, preferring instead to hunker down into a defensive crouch. That could prove the riskiest strategy of all. "If we can't focus on our own ideas, we've had it," says one dispirited Democratic consultant.
Line in the sand. As Gingrich advances on a broad front, the Democrats' best weapon may be the president's veto. The White House is ready to draw a line in the sand on issues ranging from budget and tax cuts to welfare reform (story, Page 30). But choosing the wrong target could prove dangerous. "If you lose the first time out then you don't have a threat," says presidential scholar Charles Jones. Agrees a top administration official: "You've got to really be able to pick your fights. In this business, you are more clearly identified with the fights you wage" than with what you accomplish.
House GOP leadership aides say they would welcome (even solicit) some presidential vetoes--in part because they would force Clinton to share the blame for any gridlock. Even so, Republicans say they expect to pass more than half of their conservative "Contract With America"--with some Democratic support. Last week they even began looking to the second 100 days and to ways to fend off internal divisions on issues such as immigration.
In the Senate, however, some moderate Republicans are already chafing at Gingrich's one-man show. Veteran Republicans know there will be no long honeymoon and no free political ride. "The biggest pitfall," says GOP Chairman Haley Barbour, "is that we have set the bar very, very high for ourselves."
In his own search to reassert authority, Clinton has consulted everyone from former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin to self-help-infomercial maven Anthony Robbins. Still, neither the president nor the shellshocked Democrats have yet, as one top House Democratic leadership aide puts it, "figured out how to act in the minority." If they don't learn quickly, they may have more time than they expect.
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