POLITICAL WRAP MARCH 21, 1997 TRANSCRIPT

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Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields and the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot join Margaret Warner in the NewsHour's weekly political wrap-up. This week, they discuss the uncertain future of Newt Gingrich.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. March 14, 1997: Shields & Gigot discuss the stormy fight over how to investigate campaign financing. January 21, 1997: Jim Lehrer leads a discussion on Gingrich's standing after being reprimanded by the House. Browse the Online NewsHour's Congressional coverage.

MARGARET WARNER: For our end-of-the-week political analysis we turn to syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot.

Paul, while the President has been in Helsinki, there's been a lot of turmoil on the Hill over Newt Gingrich's apparent backing off of his tax cut proposals. What has he been up to? Explain this.

PAUL GIGOT, Wall Street Journal: A lot of Republicans would like to know, Margaret. They gave them an earful about it. I think he thinks he was beating a tactical retreat on taxes in order to outfox the Democrats. At least, this is what he was saying in explanation.

MARGARET WARNER: And he said this on Monday to reporters.

PAUL GIGOT: Right. He walked off the floor of the House and said it to reporters. It was a calculated statement. And what he was trying to do was to say--he's got a problem. Like a lot of Republicans he's very worried about getting beaten up again over cutting Medicare in order to cut taxes. And he wants to pass a budget that the President won't veto. And he wants to do it with Democrats. A lot of boll weevil Democrats in the House, the southerners, or more conservative members, don't like tax cuts. So he's saying, if I give up the tax cut first, pass a balanced budget, then we can come around and have a debate over tax cuts later. A lot of conservatives say if you give it up first, how are you going to get it later, and in fact, tax cuts have become a real leading edge, bedrock conservative principle, Republican principle. If you give it up, what do you stand for? Bill Clinton will take the balanced budget, pass that, and take all the credit, and then leave you with nothing. You're left there in the sort of historic pre-Reagan Republican mold of saying, no, no, no, and you don't stand for anything positive.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Mark, what happened this week? I mean--

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, what happened, Margaret, was that the Speaker, who is a very smart man, violated one of the first rules of American politics. One of the first rules is--as learned nationally in the 1988 Dukakis campaign, and that is, you do not let stand the next news cycle, a misimpression, it is unflattering to you, or politically disadvantageous to you. Your rebut it. You rebuke it. You correct it. And Newt Gingrich made a statement on Monday. The statement was take tax cuts out of the equation and what's the liberal excuse now for not balancing the budget? A perfectly legitimate query, and probably not a bad political ploy for a minority leader in a strong position in his party. He is a majority leader in a weak position in his party and in the Congress, and he let this thing hang out there for four or five days.

MARGARET WARNER: But the President--

MARK SHIELDS: But the President--to the point, Margaret, where there's a rule in Washington, and that is when somebody switches his position and comes closer to you, we say that person has grown. When somebody leaves that position that he shares with you and goes the other way, he's caved, he's a moral cretin, or whatever else.

PAUL GIGOT: I thought you were really going to say the Speaker had done a wonderful thing.

MARK SHIELDS: Newt Gingrich was--Newt Gingrich was commended by The Washington Post. He said quite boldly in the editorial, we know this is of no help to the Speaker, and he probably isn't welcome yet, but he did the right thing. So all this was going on, and Paul's absolutely right. There was restlessness, restiveness, and ultimately a revolution in the ranks of the conservatives.

MARGARET WARNER: Newt Gingrich goes to the Florida House today and says what?

PAUL GIGOT: What he's been telling Republicans elsewhere privately since then on Wednesday and Thursday, which is that, oh, the press blew this up, I'm deeply committed to tax cuts, we're going to cut taxes after all, after Jack Kemp had sent him a rocket saying, you'd better put tax cuts front and center. I think part of the problem here is that Newt Gingrich used the words--he said the balanced budget is a moral imperative. A moral imperative. Now, there are a lot of things that are moral imperatives. Putting money in working people's pockets is a moral imperative. Freedom is a moral imperative. Helping your children is a moral imperative. But I'll tell you the balanced budget is not a moral imperative. It is an accounting tool. And he makes--the Republicans have elevated this balanced budget to the only thing they seem to want. And it's become a boxed canyon for them. And as long as they're trapped into this, I think they're going to have a very difficult time doing anything. The deficit now is down at about $90 billion, $100 billion. Throw out the balanced budget and get to something that's a more assertive, positive agenda.

MARK SHIELDS: Wait a minute. The balanced budget was supposed to be out of reach because of the damn Clinton tax cut of 1993 was going to send the deficits through the roof. The Republicans are in a bad political problem. There's no doubt about it. Paul's right. There's a fault line in the Republican Party. The fault line is between those who are supply siders, who believe tax cuts are the road to salvation, political success, national honor, and better families. And there are those who the longest tradition in the Republican Party--Paul--

PAUL GIGOT: No, not salvation. Just take this earth.

MARK SHIELDS: This earth, and that would lead to salvation. But--and there are those, and it's a long tradition of the Republican Party, who argue for fiscal responsibility; that you have to balance the budget. There's been a big, big fight between Main Street Republicans and the easy street Republicans.

MARGARET WARNER: But explain--if you were sitting at home and you now were wondering what is Newt Gingrich really planning to do when they go into budget negotiations with the White House, what is he going to do? I mean, which was the real Newt Gingrich, Monday or Tuesday?

PAUL GIGOT: Look, I think that is a question we don't know. What we do know is this. President Clinton ran on tax cuts in 1996. There are a lot of Democrats in Congress who still think tax cutting is a good idea. Five of them testified, and they were five not conservative members, liberal members in favor of tax cuts of one kind or another this week. There's a majority of 218 in this House of Representatives for cutting taxes. The Speaker's job and the task of leadership is to get there. Don't prematurely surrender. Say work, how we're going to do it, and then be quiet about how you're going to get there so that maybe at the end you can get something that your team likes and you can sell to the country. So, in other words, he made his job more difficult this week to do something like that.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Mark, how serious--move it beyond the tax cuts into other leadership issues for Gingrich. How serious is the conservative disaffection with him?

MARK SHIELDS: Newt Gingrich's hold on power is increasingly tenuous. He has--there are those who snipe at him within his own party. There are others more ambitious, or equally ambitious, who would like to see a vacancy there, and they want to replace him. And Jerry Seib in the Wall Street Journal wrote this week, he didn't know whether it was reflecting a new Republican consensus on tax cuts or igniting a civil war. And I think that's what we're seeing. I think there are some people who would--who think that the Speaker's day has passed. I mean, you get that from conservative organizations like the Cato Institute, Steven Moore this week, and I think there's a real problem when he does this and when there is a lack of certainty and a lack of self-confidence, and I think in fairness to the Speaker, you have to acknowledge that the 104th Congress he was getting beaten over the head, the Republican Congress was in terrible shape in the spring of 1996, Margaret, and Newt Gingrich was shrewd enough in the summer of 1996 to rehabilitate his party, to save his majority by agreeing in practicality to pass minimum wage, to pass health care portability, to pass clean drinking water, to pass the welfare reform, get Bill Clinton to sign it, and so no one could make the charge against the Republican Congress, but they didn't do anything. Newt Gingrich, if, in fact, in--Paul's position--if, in fact, he were to pass a balanced budget, you know who's going to get credit for it, but that's the only way you're going to get tax cuts.

MARGARET WARNER: Was the other revolt we saw by Republicans yesterday over-funding for these House committees, including the campaign financing probe, was that related to problems over the tax cut?

PAUL GIGOT: I think the tax cut was something that they--seeming to walk away from tax cutting was one of their motives, but the immediate motive was to try to stop the Republican leadership at the behest of committee chairs to add to their budgets this year. I mean, they came in two years ago--two and a half years ago now--out of these members--and what they said is, we're going to cut committees by a third. Congress is spending by a third. They did. And now the leadership--because the leadership is weaker--and that's one of the things that the Democrats have succeeded, you know, they decided they were going to cut off the revolution at its head and by going at the Speaker, they weakened it. So the committee chairmen are now feeling their oats and are saying, I want a little more turf. And these members said, we've got to do something to get their attention. And they walked away on a budget vote. And it was in real active principle on their part. It got their attention. They got what they wanted. They got a freeze in place for a while of last year's budget, but the bigger point, Margaret, is that there's nobody running this House. It's a headless house. It's a fifth--Republican members don't believe they want--everybody--it's every man for himself. In tactics, they're almost like President Clinton. No one wants to lead. Everybody's triangulating with everybody else, consulting their pollster, saying, what can I do for me, so you've got these ad hoc coalitions forming, but there's no common direction or common theme right now. And that's the frustration some of these members felt.

MARK SHIELDS: By following the Republican Contract with America, you know, and blindly supporting, loyally supporting it--they ended up the plank in the spring of 1996 by a 2 to 1 margin; the American people thought they were extremists.

PAUL GIGOT: They won re-election, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: No, but they won--

PAUL GIGOT: They won the Congress.

MARK SHIELDS: They won re-election after Newt Gingrich saved their fannies in the summer of 1996, Paul. Your own Wall Street Journal poll in June of 1996, 2 to 1, extremist and non-productive, the Congress. By the summer--by September of 1996 that it turned around. What happened in the intervening three months? The Congress and the President worked together. It hurt Bob Dole who was trying to run against Bill Clinton, showed Bill Clinton could get things done, and it hurt every Democratic challenger in the country who couldn't argue that the Republican Congress had been extremist and non-productive.

PAUL GIGOT: Passed a good portion of the Contract With America.

MARK SHIELDS: That isn't what saved--

PAUL GIGOT: I don't think the minimum wage saved the day. I--

MARGARET WARNER: Are you saying it might have worked for the campaign, but it shouldn't--they shouldn't be doing that now?

PAUL GIGOT: I think they need to do something. The last time they were accused--the Congress was accused of doing too much. The problem now is they don't want to do anything at all, or don't give the appearance or having the confidence to do something. I mean, what they need to do, pick a fight, go after--try to pick some--I don't care if it's the National Endowment for the Arts--you want to zero it out--pick a fight that's rooted in your principles and go for it. Show that you're standing for something.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. We have to leave it there. Thank you both.

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