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All year long, Gingrich had been able to hold together his Republican troops, especially the faithful freshmen, largely by arguing that their unity was their best weapon if they were out to conquer the capital. But for many members, there is no larger mission than the assault on abortion rights. Members were growing tired of going along with the Speaker; they were suffering, as majority leader Dick Armey put it, from "greater-good fatigue." They drew the line that night, after 26 hours of floor debate, as the House moved toward a vote on the spending bill. Newt's high command knew it didn't look good. By majority whip Tom DeLay's count, the Republican leadership had started the day fully 80 votes short of a majority; now, with precious time ticking away, Gingrich still needed at least 10 votes.
It was, in the words of DeLay aide John Feehery, "come-to-Jesus time." This would be the final bill before the House adjourned for its month-long August recess. A defeat, in Gingrich's eyes, meant that the budget battles scheduled for the fall would suddenly be much, much harder. At such a moment as this, a traditional Speaker might have reached into his pocket and pulled out a water project here, an Air Force base there to secure the last votes he needed. But Gingrich has little in common with his predecessors; he has never even chaired a committee in Congress, where he might have learned the brokerage business. And anyway the sticking point was abortion; neither side could be bought off. The conservatives had added three antiabortion amendments to the bill in committee; the moderates had responded by insisting on two of their own, restoring federal money for family planning programs and requiring states to provide funding for low-income women's abortions in cases of rape or incest.
Around 9 that evening, two dozen members of the antiabortion Family Caucus had taken the question to a higher authority. They retreated to the Tip O'Neill room, where they usually held their weekly Bible class, and took turns reading Scripture and praying, sometimes holding hands. They finally told their leaders they would go along with the family-planning money and vote for the bill. Now Gingrich needed the moderates to cede ground over the rape and incest question. "This is a time when the American people are looking at what we are doing," he told them. Did they want to go home losers?
What's more, he told them, several vulnerable freshmen who opposed the bill had privately offered to switch their votes if it were necessary. Did these moderates, most of whom enjoyed relatively safe seats, want to put the freshmen's survival on the line over this?
"I ended up voting for a bill that I didn't like," said New York Republican Sherwood Boehlert, "and I did so because of the Speaker." The bill passed, 219 to 208.