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That machine has perfected the art of the shakedown. Whip Tom DeLay of Texas actually keeps a book in his office listing how much the 400 largest special-interest pacs gave to either party in the past two years and makes sure contributors to the Democrats are marked down in his book as "unfriendly.'' Representative John Boehner of Ohio is in charge of orchestrating how interest-group lobbyists can raise cash to promote the Contract. What do the lobbyists get in return? Awe-inspiring access to the legislative process, including the right to write the bills themselves, like the one passed last February that imposed a 13-month moratorium on federal regulations. During floor debate, the Gucci set stood close by, typing out on their laptop computers the talking points that Republican leaders would use on the floor. Gingrich's money operation is now purring: during the first six months of this year House Republicans received nearly 60% of the campaign contributions given by the top 400 pacs. Last year Democrats got two-thirds of such contributions.
ACHILLES' HEEL
"My strength and my weakness," gingrich says, "is that I see normally impersonal events vividly and personally." Conviction and charisma helped him transform the House and press his agenda, but ego and hubris produced the major miscalculations. If the months leading up to the August break were played on offense, the fall was full of fumbles. For the first time, Gingrich had to close a deal, to bargain with someone whose interests were at odds with his own. He learned the hard way that this stage of the game, the stage at which Bob Dole is the unchallenged master, was not his strength. Nor was he entirely suited to the housekeeping details his new job entailed. By autumn, he had fallen months behind on basic House assignments, like passing the 13 regular spending bills on time. When his Democratic foil Barney Frank is asked to assess Gingrich's performance this year, he says, "I am very pleasantly surprised. He's been much worse than I expected."
Before the August recess, Gingrich drilled his troops on how to sell his yet-to-be-unveiled plan to "save Medicare," loading them down with packets full of talking points, charts and graphs. But when work resumed in the fall, the Democrats suddenly rose from the dead and struck back with a lethal message. The Medicare rescue, they charged, was actually just a way to give a tax break to the rich by robbing from the old. Gingrich had known all along that $245 billion in tax cuts over seven years would be hard to explain and easy to attack. But he didn't think he had any choice. "The tax cut is the glue that holds together the coalition that balances the budget," he explained later.
In defending the tax cuts as well as the drastic spending cuts, he had lost control of the high-road message he had so carefully crafted on Medicare. He had planned to make his case in a splashy September speech, but ended up canceling it, partly in deference to the sensibilities of the Senate, an august body that did not like anyone thinking it marched to the beat of mere House members. So instead of launching his fall campaign on high principles, he immediately found himself bickering over details--none of which was particularly pretty.