Revenge Of The Right

NEWT GINGRICH WAS PREPARING FOR THE LONG HAUL. That's what revolutionaries do, once they've stormed up the marble stairs and occupied the palace. Three days after the Republican right shook the nation, if not the world, their theoretician-in-chief was back in the Capitol. Surrounded by books and models of dinosaurs (he'd once wanted to be a paleontologist), gazing contentedly at the panorama of monuments on the Mall, Newt was examining every detail. No item was too personal, no goal to sweeping. To get in shape, he decreed, his daily schedule henceforth had to be built around 90 minutes of exercise. "No exceptions," he barked. When an aide offered a bagel with cream cheese, he waved it away contemptuously. "Just plain," he ordered.

Then to the laptop. A secretary tapped in his password and began entering his To Do list for the revolution. All bills to be posted on the Internet. The GOP's "Contract With America," Newt's 10-point anti-New Deal, to be voted on within 100 days. A "third wave" majority party to be assembled by issues and targeted "new media," not by the usual party to be assembled by issues and targeted "new media," not by the usual pork and patronage. A welfare state to be dismantled. The biggest pitfall? "Traditional Republicans," he snapped. They may "convince themselves that their acceptability to the old elite is more important than their acceptability to the American people."

The gravest danger is betrayal of The People's Revolution from within! V.I. Lenin couldn't have said it better, had he been a Republican-and he probably would have made the same call on the cream cheese. Seventy-seven years ago, almost to the day, Bolsheviks in Petrograd raced into the Winter Palace in the name of communism. Last week in one of the most profound electoral routs in American history, Republicans won the fight to occupy the Capitol and to mount what their more hyperbolic commanders think of as a counterrevolution: a full-scale attack on the notion that a central government should play a central role in the life of a nation. "It's the Russian Revolution in reverse," declared Republican strategist Bill Kristol. Great sound bite--and he meant it.

Two years ago Bill Clinton promised an administration that "looks like America," but America last week chose a Congress that looked and sounded like Rush Limbaugh: socially traditional, suburban and rural, anti-Washington, largely white and male, disgusted by federal claims to use tax money for the betterment of lives. The vote was national and deep, the rejection of Democrats total. Not a single Republican incumbent lost. The COP won not only the Senate and House but made huge gains in statehouses and legislatures as well. It was the biggest GOP sweep since 1946, when postwar America tossed out a Democratic Party that had trebled the power of Washington in the name of fighting Depression at home and fascism abroad.

Though Newt talks of revolution, most voters probably would settle for something more prosaic: a therapeutic shake-up on the Hill (fostering a lot of fear and loathing among ousted Democratic members and their lobbyist friends downtown), term limits, a balanced budget, new tax cuts for families, draconian crime measures, a serious revamping of welfare. But even that list--the core of Gingrich's "Contract With America"--represents, if seriously pursued, the most radical change in direction since FDR arrived in 1983. "I will cooperate, but I won't compromise," says Gingrich, an army brat who didn't serve. His role model is Ike, and this is total war. "I may fail, we may fail," he says. "But this is real. I am who I seem to be."

For now, Bill Clinton is immobilized, if not irrelevant- a presidential Gulliver tied down by Congress. His "cooperation" will be needed, and there are many Democratic votes to be had for some of the GOP agenda. But if Republicans are to succeed at government-by-Congress, most of their challenges are internal. They must resist the inertia and seductions of the capital, the cozy expense-account dinners. They will be threatened by radicals as much as by traditionalists. Only hours after the polls closed, for example, some of the wildest-eyed were musing aloud about invading Cuba (Sen. Jesse Helms) and abolishing the income tax (Rep. Bill Archer).