Thirty years ago, then-House Minority Leader Newt Gingrich made a pitch to Republican National Committee Chair Haley Barbour, a pitch that would drastically alter the balance of power in Washington.
Mr. Gingrich’s idea, which went down more easily over rounds of whiskey, was to develop a contract and a national message that Republican congressional candidates could run on in the 1994 midterm election. It was a document that would unify the GOP to try and claw power from the Democrats, who had controlled the House for four decades.
That meeting led to Republicans gathering on the steps of the Capitol on Sept. 27, 1994, to sign the “Contract With America.” A few weeks later, the GOP would win the House for the first time since 1952, and Mr. Gingrich would ascend to speaker of the House.
Three decades later, Mr. Gingrich and the surviving members of Congress who played a role in drafting the contract and passing some of its policy goals, remembered the most important component of the deal inside the original House chamber on Friday.
The key concept, the Georgia Republican recalled, was “we.”
“The real miracle wasn’t winning in ‘94 — sooner or later, we were going to win,” Mr. Gingrich said. “I spent 16 years on the project, I have reasonable knowledge about how it happened, so we were going to win.”
“But we’d won twice before, in 1946 and in 1952, for [just] one term,” he continued. “The real miracle was that we stuck together, and we went through a process.”
The contract resulted in a 100-day post-election sprint to pass 10 policies, notably changes to welfare and tort law policies and a measure to balance the federal budget. In the 1990s, Congress managed to balance the federal budget for four straight years, a feat that has not been accomplished since.
A major obstacle in accomplishing the legislative to-do list was a White House controlled by Democrats with President Clinton at the helm. But the House GOP was able to build bipartisan support on some of its priorities, particularly welfare reform, that forced Mr. Clinton’s hand.
“I have to tell you, when I sat there as the speaker at the State of the Union and Clinton goes, ‘The era of big government is over,’” Mr. Gingrich said. “Now, I have to stand up and applaud. I mean, I knew he didn’t mean it. He knew I knew he didn’t mean it, but he’d been told you better say it if you want to get reelected.”
Former GOP lawmakers who signed the contract, including Reps. Joe Scarborough, Pete Hoekstra, J.C. Watts, David McIntosh and Rick Lazio, attended the anniversary event, along with the last remaining signatories left in Congress, Sens. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Mr. Graham, who recalled that he needed heavy convincing from Mr. Gingrich that the plan would work, said that the document gave Republicans something to talk about on the campaign trail that they believed in and could attract votes, something that could prove useful in today’s politics.
“It’s so easy to talk about why the other person sucks, [but] eventually you need to tell people what you’re for,” Mr. Graham said. “I think we could learn a lot in today’s political discourse about the Contract with America, that Republicans, after we get through reminding people how bad things are, we need to talk about how good they could be.”
The unified agreement among House Republicans and the burst of legislative action that took place in 1995 led to a seismic shift in Washington. Since signing the Contract and flipping the House, Republicans have controlled the lower chamber for 22 of the last 30 years.
Now, with weeks remaining ahead of a pivotal election, Mr. Gingrich again reiterated the importance of “we” as he contemplated the matchup between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
“Those of you who know our nominee for president well enough ought to remind him of this idea,” he said. “It’s a radical idea, but it was the word ’we,’ you know, I didn’t pull this off. We did.”
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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