Revenge Of The Right

There are other dangers. In control of Congress for the first time since 1954, Republicans will be asked to serve their friends in big business, and could stir populist anger if they're too accommodating. Americans are no more fond of Wall Street than of Washington. The Democrats' "special interests" are soon to be replaced by an equally long list of Republican ones: agriculture, the oil industry, the gun lobby, the Christian right. Above all, the Republicans will run smack into the unspoken fiscal reality of public life. The "them" whose benefits the GOP will have to cut are, in most cases, the middle-class "us" in whose name the GOP counterrevolution was launched. "We need to move quickly," says Kristol, "but not recklessly."

Choosing between the quick and the reckless means tension, the internal strife that bedevils any new regime. Republican prospects rest on the savvy and intramural statesmanship of a trio of leaders who were hunkered down last week in an otherwise deserted Capitol: Gingrich in the House, Bob Dole and Phil Gramm in the Senate. The three men embody the history of the GOP's rise and turn to the right. Dole, an ally of Richard Nixon's, long ago helped undermine the old, liberal Eastern establishment of the party. Gramm and Gingrich represent a new GOP, based on antifederal (and initially racial) resentment in the South and which has expanded to conquer suburbs throughout the nation.

For now, the three leaders are comrades in arms. They are likely to join Clinton in pushing passage of a world-trade agreement in the lame-duck session this month, though Dole has voiced reservations. Come January., Newt's "contract" agenda will lead the way. Congressional reforms, term limits, a balanced-budget amendment-all should pass not only the Newtonian House but the Doleful Senate, "I think we can get all of that done," Dole laconically predicted. But beyond those items the three leaders have differing views and assessments of what happened last week. And there is another source of tension as well. Gramm and Dole are leading contenders for the right to challenge Clinton in 1996. Dole said last week he hadn't decided whether to turn down the job of Senate majority leader, as he would be pressured to do if he declares. Newt's support could be crucial.

Every insurgency has an insider, a useful but suspect eider statesman. That's Dole. He's been there, done that. Twenty-five years ago, he was the vicious partisan, de-tided as "Nixon's Doberman pinscher" in the Senate. Now he's the relatively mellow GOP leader with the best ties to Democrats and the least apocalyptic view. Dole's instincts and history are "green-eyeshade Republican," wary of supply-side economies, more interested in balancing the budget than in radically cutting government per se. Farm subsidies, for example, remain his idea of good policy.

In his Capitol suite last week he sat with tasseled loafers propped on a Louis XIV table, taking calls. From Asia, Secretary of State Warren Christopher called to pledge cooperation. ("I like Chris," said Dole. "One of the best guys they've got.") He laughed as he recounted how Robert Strauss, the Democratic super lawyer, playfully had demanded that Dole buy him lunch. Dole, ever cautious, sees no vast ideo-logical meaning in last week's election results. It was, he said, like the Watergate year of 1974, when Republicans were "the bums." Not one voter, he added, had mentioned having been inspired by Gingrich's contract. "People are not looking for miracles,' he added. In Bob Dole's world, they never are.

Gramm, a former Democrat, sees miracles every day in the market, and he claims to hate a government that stifles free enterprise. More angry than sunny, he's a transitional figure between the party of Nixon and the party of Reagan that now is back, this time with younger leadership. The head of the GOP's successful Senate campaign committee, Gramm can talk ideology with Newt and precincts with Dole--and is not eager to take a back seat to either. "Gramm is Gingrich without the techno-babble," says one GOP insider.