Revenge Of The Right

While Gingrich philosophizes, Gramm moves in for the kill. Gramm, too, was plotting in his office last week. When Clinton held his mournful press conference, Gramm was watching the shoe-box-size TV on his credenza. He regarded the tiny figure with a mix of amusement and disdain-the way the driver of a semi might view an armadillo on a Texas highway. Clinton gamely sounded the New Democrat centrist themes he ran on in 1992 (and mostly forgot about after he was elected). Voters want a "smaller government," Clinton said, one that "is not a burden to them, but that empowers them." Gramm shook his head in mock sorrow. "He just doesn't get it," said Gramm. "Government doesn't empower you," he proclaimed to the little TV screen. "Freedom empowers you!"

Gingrich is a sweeping, if overwrought, thinker whose interests range from prehistory to science fiction. He despises the "welfare state," but once campaigned for its leading Republican architect, Nelson Rockefeller. Now he wants Washington to punish, instruct and inspire: build more prisons, require the teaching of the Constitution, allow voluntary school prayer. "Don't think right or left, but forward," he lectures. What he really means is: I won't forget the religious right.

The young COP leaders pay homage to faith but rely on intellect. Clintonites are well-known, and much ridiculed, for their academic ties. But the "action intellectuals" with clout now are the new generation of Republicans in Congress. Born during World War II, they acquired Ph.D, degrees and pursued teaching careers before entering politics. The new crowd has no ties to the Ivy League or the politically correct dogmas developed there. Instead, their heroes are free-market philosophers from Adam Smith to E A. Hayek, and conservative British leaders like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher.

Gingrich, 51, was a history professor in Georgia who concluded that "America fell apart in 1967." Gramm taught economics at Texas A&M and keeps Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" next to the Bible on his desk. But perhaps the most unlikely new pol is Gramm's fellow Texan, Rep. Richard Anney of north Dallas. A decade ago he was teaching price theory in the economics department at North Texas State. Now he's about to become House majority leader, second in command to Newt and the designated bomb thrower when Gingrich is forced to play statesman. The lineup is no accident, says Gingrich. Intellectuals are always leaders of revolutions. And politics, in the age of talk radio, is as much about populax education as it is about doing favors.

These polemicists - especially Gingrich--are masters of "new media," which surround and weaken the grip of the national press. Newt propounds a world in which blast faxes, modems, satellite feeds and talk radio are the dedicated lines to the voters they want to reach. "Thirty percent of this country is capable of having an astonishingly detailed, third- and fourth-level discussion about issues," he says. Those are the votes he wants to win, and he bravely claims he doesn't need the traditional powers to do it.

Until last week the fashionable theory-even among conservatives--was that the right had blown it in the '80s. The COP, after the hapless presidency of George Bush, was a spent vehicle. Major parties would wither. Independent candidacies would multiply. That all still may come to pass. In the meantime, though, look what's happened. In Texas, George W. Bush is governor-elect-and far more conservative than his daddy. Republicans toppled the Democratic speaker, Thomas Foley, in Washington state, and Dan Rostenkowski in Chicago.