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After so many years in exile the Republicans were at the mercy of a system rigged by their enemies. They calculated that even when G.O.P. candidates captured 47% of the total U.S. vote, they won only 40% of the seats because of gerrymandered districts; Democrats then grudgingly offered them only 35% of the committee seats and 17% of the committee staff. The best a Republican Representative could hope was that if he went along most of the time without making too big a fuss, some Democratic committee chairman might occasionally feel generous and throw a few dollars to his district.
What the newcomers saw was the Stockholm syndrome at work, as the Republicans began to identify with their long-time captors. By its sheer existence, the obnoxious COS was threatening that cozy arrangement. Senior Republicans took newly elected ones aside and counseled that if they wanted to have any future in the House, they would do well to avoid the cos crowd. Time and again, Newt was told by his elders to sit down, shut up, quit making a fool of himself and the institution. But on he went.
Gingrich did not chair the Conservative Opportunity meetings, but he was the idea man, never showing up without a memo to distribute. The society wanted to finish the unfinished Reagan Revolution. Reagan had succeeded in taming the Soviet threat but had left the hated welfare state intact because the G.O.P. was unwilling to mud-wrestle the Democrats. In a 1986 interview with National Journal, Gingrich spoke of Reagan as a sort of John the Baptist figure, "the brilliant articulator of a vision that will take a generation to sort out."
While they had few sympathizers in the House, Gingrich and the COS were developing an audience outside it. The happiest coincidence of Gingrich's political career is the fact that he and the TV cameras arrived in that chamber the same year. In those days, the brightest and most ambitious in Congress made their reputations in the hearing rooms, by developing an expertise on one important issue. But exiled to such legislative backwaters as House Administration and the Joint Library Committee, Gingrich was never going to leave much of a mark that way. While most members avoided the House floor for all but votes, Gingrich and the COS seemed to live there. At night, for interminable hours after official business was done, they would rail on with only the weary doorkeepers there to hear them. Thanks to rules that kept the cameras fixed on the person who was doing the talking, millions of viewers had no idea that the orators were addressing a huge chamber full of empty leather seats.
Finally, an exasperated Speaker Tip O'Neill decided to call their bluff and order the cameras to pan the chamber. It amounted to a declaration of war, ultimately leading to an infamous 1984 showdown. O'Neill referred to one of Gingrich's antics as "the lowest thing I've seen in my 32 years in Congress." Whereupon Gingrich succeeded in having O'Neill formally disciplined for having made a personal criticism of a House member, Gingrich, on the floor. It was the first time a Speaker had been rebuked that way since the 1790s, and gleeful Republicans had television ads on the air within days. With that smirk that still drives the Democrats crazy, Gingrich announced: "I am now a famous person."