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In the coming year, the two men will play out in full view their sibling rivalry. Even as the whole Medicare fight was unfolding and the government shutdown looming, Gingrich was already laying out a spring offensive. Among the next items on the agenda: privatization, immigration, crime, tax reform, affirmative action. But retrieving the excitement of the first 100 days may be beyond even his powers as ringleader. That's because Gingrich and company started with the part they all could agree on. There is a broad, consensual loathing among conservatives for the welfare state and its nurturing bureaucracy. So Gingrich had allies in the destruction of the old model: from the Christian right, the libertarians, the fiscal conservatives and the family-values groups. But when it comes time to build something in its place, the models are wildly different.
For his part, Gingrich dreams of steering America back to its idyllic past by way of the future, when every poor child will have an intact family, a safe neighborhood and a laptop. His faith rests in market forces and technology and private enterprise, which may soon put him at odds with his allies whose faith rests in God.
But while Gingrich may be on a collision course with his own coalition, he may yet rise to the occasion. He has a genius for seeing the wave coming and knowing just when to catch it. As the ultraconservative Weyrich notes with more than a little approval: "He has grown so much in the past few years. What he has learned, which is absolutely essential, is how to keep a diverse coalition together."
This raises the question, for a man always moving on to the next job, of which job he is moving toward now. Gingrich announced last month that he would not seek the presidency in 1996, which will give him more time to behave as though he has already won it. This is, after all, the first speaker to have his own bully pulpit, and bodyguards. "Would he be a good President?" muses conservative editor William Kristol. "I wouldn't have said so a year ago. I wasn't sure he had the right character or temperament to be President." But this year's performance, particularly as an executive of sorts, surprised Kristol. "On the bully-pulpit side of things, he's awfully good. He should be a little more disciplined and all, but he can sketch out the conservative vision more compellingly than probably anyone around."
His folks back home in Hummelstown are more skeptical. They're proud of their favorite son. But Mayor Alexander isn't sure about a statue, or even a street name, just yet. "Before we go blowing our horn, we want to see what his record is like after a couple of years," he says. "Not that I think anything would happen, but we want to be sure we don't regret what we do."
--With reporting by Wendy Cole/Harrisburg, Michael Duffy/Washington and Douglas Waller/Hummelstown