Vander Jagt: They wanted a Republican majority but a lot of them didn't believe it was possible. And some of them would even draw charts and [yeah, I'm] up in the inner cities and it would never in a thousand years ever go Republican, and what's left, you gotta win two-thirds or three-fourth and they'd say, 'You know, Newt has this impossible dream.' And so they didn't believe it was possible.

Also, the House had been a comfortable place. You kind of protected one another. That's why it was so dramatic when Republicans went against the bank scandal in the House where you had all these overdrafts and it was just a way of getting the interest free loans. It was Newt and his band of people who wanted to change things that led the fight to have this public.

If it hadn't been for the new people that came in, personified by Newt Gingrich, they would have been swept under the rug, they would have issued some report and slapped the wrists of ten people and would have forgotten. Now some people say that's tearing the institution down. Now I say that's letting the sun shine in. And it did need reforming, but in order to reform it you have to show its flaws and its warts.

Q: Give me a picture of how GOPAC played into the idea of 'let's rethink our status and how to change it.'

Vander Jagt: Well, I was one of the creators of GOPAC. I recruited Pete Du Pont, former Governor of Delaware, former Presidential candidate to become the head of GOPAC, and had to almost take him by the hand to former President Jerry Ford to solicit Ford's signing of a fund-raising letter and I made our lists available to him.

So I helped build GOPAC, but Newt was brilliant in terms of tactics and strategy. On election night, he had called a couple weeks before and said, 'Guy, you know, it might happen. In two weeks that impossible dream is going to be a reality. And that could happen just because of the foundation that you laid, and I'd like you with me in Georgia on election night.' So, I was there and the night before election night he had a little party for his family and his inner circle and my wife and I were there. And he took me aside and said, 'Remember one time in the airport in Miami, we met? I'd been hounding you that the NRCC had to do more, or we're never gonna get to be a majority?'

And I had been saying [for] years [to Newt], 'On a scale of a 1 to 100 the NRCC is functioning at about a 93. If somehow by working 27 hours a day instead of 20 I get it from 93 to 99 that's not gonna make that much of a difference. For example, we can only give $50,000 and in a $600,000 campaign, $50,000 isn't decisive. The things that you're saying must be done, go beyond what the NRCC can do. It goes to what happens on the floor of the House. It goes to places like GOPAC. It goes to talk radio.' And he said, 'Do you remember we sat down and on a map, we wrote down and plotted the strategy of what it would take to produce a Republican majority? You know, that turned out to be our blueprint. That's what we did in this election.'

So yes, GOPAC played a very important part of it. Through Newt's tapes --150 candidates all over America were listening to Newt's speech wherever they were driving to the next event. So that you had Republicans all singing from the same set of music and it was educational. In the early years, GOPAC recruited candidates to run for state legislatures, so we Republicans would have a farm system where we could recruit Congressional candidates.

Q: The ideology that Newt enthusiastically forwarded, how did that sit with the old bulls of the Republican Party? Aside from his personality, and aside from the quixotic nature of his impossible dream, do you think that in any way he offended them with what he believed and thought?

Vander Jagt: It is difficult to generalize, but I believe that Newt's philosophy is basic, fundamental Republican philosophy, so the vast majority of the old Republican bulls in the House were not offended by Newt's ideology. There were those who took exception to some of the stands that he took, but by and large, what Newt stood for is what I think the Republican Party stands for. The old bulls had problems with his method of getting there, but I don't think they had problems with the goal that he wanted to achieve.

Q: Well, in that line, how I should measure the audacity of coming into Congress as a freshman, as he did, and then leaving straight for caucuses?

Vander Jagt: That's very audacious indeed. I remember in those early years, maybe not in 1980, but probably as recently as '83 or '84, we would have weekly leadership meetings, and we would all troop into the Whip's office, which was then Trent Lott, and have our weekly meeting with Newt. These weren't just lackeys that he was summoning for this weekly meeting. Dick Cheney, Jack Kemp [chuckles], don't jump through hoops for people.

We would come because Newt would call these meetings and after every luncheon we all would get our reading material. The old history professor would assign reading. None of us ever had time to do it, but it never stopped him. Enthusiastically and with effervescence he would always give us our homework assignment. Now that is audacious to summon the leadership to your luncheon once a week and to have them attend and to have them at least go through the motions of reading these homework assignments that he dished out.

Q: You say that Newt used to actually give you guys reading assignments?

Vander Jagt: Every time. If I were to bump into Dick Cheney today off in Iowa, he would say, 'Hey, Guy, has Newt given you your papers to read yet this week?'

Q: Why would you all accommodate this?

Vander Jagt: As I say, politics in at least this last half century has not had an individual like Newt Gingrich, in terms of the sweep of his intellect, the historical breadth, the determination, the dream, the ability to articulate. He also had the Conservative Opportunity Society, which represented a lot of votes. And he kept recruiting people --the new freshmen that I was electing to Congress, many of them would join in the Conservative Opportunity Society. And Newt was their leader and the leader gets elected by votes of the Republican Conference. So Newt, even as a very junior member, had a political impact on the House of Representatives and he had a group you didn't want to alienate.