Weyrich: Oh, he has felt my wrath on many occasions, some justified, some not. But I never hesitate to let him know and I was very pleased recently when he called me about a matter and he said, 'I'm calling you because I know that you will tell me what I don't want to hear, if you know, if it's true.' And there's no higher compliment that you could pay me than that. And if I have that kind of relationship with him, then it can't go wrong. That doesn't mean, however, that he's going to listen to every piece of advice that I give him.

And by the way, every piece of advice I give isn't right because I don't have any infallibility connected to my views. It's simply that I've been around a long time, I've seen a lot and I'm less inclined to get caught up with fads than many in this city.

Q: Would it significantly hurt Gingrich if, in fact, you publicly broke with him on any given issue?

Weyrich: Well, it wouldn't hurt him if I broke with him, but it would hurt him if the religious conservatives who are involved in the political process broke with him because that's part of his base in Georgia. There are areas of his district that would be troublesome for him if that occurred. But, you know, it wouldn't hurt him. I'm not a household word, so if I personally opposed him I don't think it would have any impact. But if a number of different organizations opposed him, then I think it might have some impact, especially if he had a viable opponent.

Q: So that's a pretty handy substitute for a bedrock belief, right? I mean, he may not absolutely come from the same place, but if he realized a political obligation and the practical reality of the circumstances...

Weyrich: Well, I don't know because, for example, I warned him about involving himself in the pay raise. I told him that this would be death for him in his own district and I told him that setting it up so that anybody who went against their party on the pay raise would get punished would be used against him and he disbelieved me. He went ahead and did it anyway and it doggone near defeated him in 1990. So, Newt does what Newt wants to do. And I don't think our coming in to him and saying, 'Look if you go in this direction we're going in the other direction. We're going to come out publicly.' I don't think that would influence him. Not if he was determined to do something. Because he simply does it.

Q: I wonder what your advice was when it came to, for example, going after Jim Wright --when Newt was newly-arrived and had no particular standing.

Weyrich: Well, originally Newt lacked focus. He would be onto one project and six weeks later he would be onto a totally different project and then another three weeks he'd be onto a third project and so on. And he began to lose credibility because every time he would describe this project as the most important project on the planet and by the time people got cranked up to help him on it, he was off to something else. And I told him very candidly, 'You have a problem'. And eventually after we had discussed this a couple of time he said, 'What do I need to do to be taken seriously?' And I said, 'Look. John Williams of Delaware might be your role model.' Senator Williams was a chicken farmer. He had a high, squeaky voice. He represented the tiny state of Delaware. He should not have been a great power in the United States Senate. But he was a great power and people in both political parties quaked every time he came into the room.

Now the reason is because John Williams took on powerful corruption. It was John Williams who exposed Billy Sol Estes. It was John Williams who exposed Bobby Baker and others. And so, having toppled some of these people, people didn't want to tangle with him. I said, 'There's plenty of corruption in this city that goes unnoticed and unchallenged. If you want to be taken seriously, look in that direction.' That is something that he did. Now, I don't know that he did it because I suggested it to him. Others may have well suggested it to him. But that is something that he did end up pursuing and because he took on Wright and won, he became a serious political figure. Up to that point, he was regarded as an interesting political figure, somebody that was very good for a quote, but not somebody who was perhaps going to be in the power structure. But when he took on Jim Wright and he won, he was regarded very seriously from that moment on.

Q: You say one of the things you admire about Newt is that he is a conservative, that he is not hesitant to use power. What do you mean by that?

Weyrich: Well, most conservatives hate power so much that they don't use it even for the common good. And therefore if they get in a position where they can do something, they don't do it because they don't really want to use power and authority. Newt doesn't have that problem. He knows what he is capable of doing if he gets into a position. He uses that position and so he has become a very powerful speaker. Many other conservatives would be in that position and would not be powerful speakers because they would be trying to accommodate everyone and they would never remove somebody from a committee or they wouldn't reach down under the seniority system to pick a committee chairman. He's consolidated a lot of power onto himself and he has used it wisely. And not everybody's happy about it, but the fact is, he knows how to use power and he knows this because he has studied important historical figures who used power. Figures in British political history, figures in American political history like Teddy Roosevelt. He greatly admires Teddy Roosevelt. He has really studied how they did it and he emulates what they have done.