Schroeder: I have really always found Newt very difficult, to be perfectly honest. He can be charming one second but you always have the feeling that he would be telling you a joke as he took his hand behind your back and shoved you into the wall or wherever he decided you should be shelved. He never turned off that partisan button really. He would try to kind of fluff up his personality or try to look warm and fuzzy by holding a little animal or whatever. But one of the national news magazines said it best. He's standing there with a baby and he's saying, 'Newt, kiss the baby and hold...'; he lectured the baby. So that kind of loses it. It's last minute and you realize that the sharp edge is still there.

Here's a man who blames the Democrats for Susan Smith, for heaven sakes, and a man who just has made all sorts of savage attacks on people. Yet, if anybody questions his policy he says they're being personal. I find that very interesting that he was the leader of attacking Kitty Dukakis for being a drug addict, if you remember that. That's a very personal, nasty, awful thing. We question his policies on medicare, we question his statements on medicare and he starts screaming, 'these are savage personal attacks.' To me, those were attacks on the policy. We're not attacking him as a person, discussing his eating habits or lack of eating habits or his marriage habits or any of those things. I don't know any Democrat that has been out spouting that. But he just is no [holds barred.]

As a consequence, I must say, there's never been a moment where I ever felt any collegiality toward him. I always had the feeling that he would eat his young if he thought it was going to help Newt Gingrich. It's a terrible thing to say but you just have that feeling that he's so into power and so uptight that you wouldn't trust him any further than you could throw him. And as you can tell, I can't throw him anywhere.

Q: You are a feminist and to some degree you've been an out-front spokesperson on behalf of women in this body as well as a larger scene. I wonder what you think, Congresswoman, of the new rather poignantly ideological women on the --what are they called-- femi-Newties? They are women in politics that we've been seeking...

Schroeder: Well, I say beware of wolves in designer clothing. What can I say? That whole issue about women is, again, can they stand up and be independent? And Newt adores women as long as they will be cheerleaders for his policy. But he doesn't really want them making the policy, thank you, or criticizing the policy. So, if they're proud of being femi-Newties, it's America --let them be proud of being femi-Newties, fine. I only say, the women I'm proud of are the women that stand in their own right and aren't femi-anything. They're standing for what they believe is right and they listen to people and make that determination day by day. But they're not some ideologue or cheerleaders for an ideology or whatever. I think that people want us to see women as full players and not as just team cheerers.

Q: Do you think that there might be a Newt backlash?

Schroeder: I think there's got to be a Newt backlash if the American people have their brain engaged at all. Because the message is, if you elect a Republican you're just getting another voting card for Newt Gingrich. Because this class has so totally surrendered all power to Newt that the all powerful boss Newt can pick and choose what committees you're on, where you go. He picks for everybody. What that really means is you get elected and you come here, ha, ha, ha. If you are going to get anything done, you're just going to have to surrender your voting card and do that.

So I think everybody's going to see that as one more voting card for Newt. And that is going to be very, very difficult. The only way you can change that is if Newt starts giving up his power. Is he going to back up and not have a knife over the head of every chairman and give up his right to pick the chairman? And do it like we do, have them have to be elected? I don't think so. Is he going to give up all of those rights that he's gotten? I don't think so. So, how do you run as a Republican candidate? How do you run as a Republican candidate and differentiate yourself from Newt? You can say, well I don't want him in here campaigning. Well, people will just say, you don't want to make the identity. But we can wash them all into Newt and it's all very legitimate because all these guys have been washed into Newt. The only time they get to vote against him is when he gives them permission. So people are going to figure that out

Q: Doesn't the success of the Republicans in '94 and doesn't the success as speaker suggest that liberalism is, if not dead, in trouble?

Schroeder: This country goes through different ideologies, you know...I think we're coming out of what we went into. This means the 80s --when the message of the decade was 'Get what you can and can what you get and sit on the can. Boy, that's where everybody was supposed to be. And I'm not paying any taxes, and I'm not helping those folks and I'm not doing anything. And I think '94 was the final peak of that. I think now people are beginning to say, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute,' as we watched Canada, as we watched Bosnia, we watched all these things.

What is the community of America really about? Is this just a place where people come to make money? Or is this a place where, yes, we try and have a very healthy business climate but we also care about each other? And if we find two didn't eat all their lunch, do we then cancel the lunch program? Or if we find that three students didn't repay their loans, do we cancel all student loans for the future? Or do we decide that one Head Start program wasn't good so we kill them all? Does that make sense? For a long time, boy, that was really sounding good, yeah, right, then I won't have to pay for any of that stuff. And now that it's about to go into effect, people are saying, 'Wait a minute, there is more to community than just a place to make money.' It becomes kind of the Genghis Khan type of method. When you see all of the mainstream religions standing up and saying, 'Yeah, you know, we cannot take everybody through charity.' And you see mayors saying, 'It's wonderful you're going to teach them to fish, but we don't have any fish here right now. Yeah, we want to teach them to fish but we don't have any fish to fish for, so, you know, come help our economy.' All of these things that sounded wonderfully profound in bumper-sticker slogans, once people really start to see them apply, they started to slow down a bit.

I think we're rethinking that and we're coming out of the 80s finally. I think that '96 is going to be a very thoughtful election because we're electing people that will close this century and frame where we will go in the next century. I think we are a more caring country than the 80s would have led you to believe.

I would say that the bulb is always brightest before it starts to dim. I think '94 was when that bulb of the '80s was the brightest, the final culmination. But I do think there will begin to be a revision and a change and a tempering of that extremism and that mean attitude.