Transcript
The Revolution with Steve Kornacki
Episode 5: The Revolution Arrives
We’ve made it to 1994. In September, House Republicans gather on the steps of the Capitol and sign the Contract with America. It’s a carefully-worded list of bills they promise to bring to a vote as soon as they win the majority. Election night arrives, and the Republican sweep is decisive. Democrats are completely thrown by the size of the loss — and start searching for answers. And in January 1995, Newt Gingrich’s biggest moment finally arrives: The Democrats hand over the gavel, and he becomes Speaker of the House.
Bob Michel: Good morning, everyone.
Steve Kornacki: When we left off in the last episode, it was October of 1993, a big crowd of Republicans was gathered at the backside of the U.S. Capitol, a show of strength by Newt, Gingrich demonstrating that he had the votes to become the Party’s next House leader. Now, it’s just about a year later, September of 1994, and the Republicans are at the front door.
Bob Michel: Some say why ask Republicans to stand on the Capitol steps since Washington is so unpopular these days.
Steve Kornacki: Nominally, Bob Michel is still the boss, but he’s retiring after the 1984 election, and he’s warming up the crowd here.
Bob Michel: Republicans are not here to bring the values of Washington to the rest of the country that the Democrats have for years. Republicans are here to bring values of the rest of the country here to Washington.
Steve Kornacki: The main event today is the unveiling of something called the Contract with America. And it’s not Bob Michel’s brainchild, this is Newt’s grand plan for the midterm election which is just six weeks away. The contract is a list of agenda items that these Republicans are promising to bring up for a vote in the House in the first 100 days of the new Congress, if voters give them a majority.
Bob Michel: My friends, I’ll not be able to be with you when you enter that promised land of having that long-sought majority —
Steve Kornacki: For Newt Gingrich and all of these Republicans, the political climate is looking very promising. President Clinton’s job approval rating is low. His signature effort to reform the nation’s health care system is just going down in flames. The public is not happy with how these first two years of the Clinton presidency have gone. But still, to onlookers of all partisan stripes, what these Republicans are talking about, actually winning the House, seems a bridge too far.
On paper, they’ll need a gain of 40 seats, which is a lot. Gingrich thinks it can be done if the election is nationalized. That’s what today is all about. There are scores of Republican House members and candidates here to sign the contract, to commit to the same agenda, the same themes, and then to fan out and run on them in every corner of the country. A parade of Republicans steps up to the mic.
Megan O’Neill: Our “Contract with America” calls for tough punishment for those who prey on the side.
Bill Paxon: Its tenets rise from the common sense of a —
Jean Leising: Today, it seems the values of the family are under attack from all sides, the media —
Steve Kornacki: And then the man of the hour.
Newt Gingrich: I want to say to every American that we believe in this contract and these reforms so deeply, that we have not only put them in writing today, but that they will be in a full-page ad in TV Guide that —
Steve Kornacki: The contract is in fact a document that will fit on a single page in the TV Guide. It’s been developed with the help of focus groups, careful wordsmithing, and Gingrich himself. The contract is written as a list, beginning with what it calls, quote, “major reforms” that Republicans say they will pass on the very first day of the new term. There are eight of them.
Newt Gingrich: First, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country to also apply equally to the Congress.
Steve Kornacki: Gingrich is claiming that Republicans will clean up Congress, the Congress he has so often called corrupt and antiquated and not always without merit.
Newt Gingrich: The second, select a major independent auditing firm to conduct a comprehensive audit of Congress for waste, fraud and abuse.
Steve Kornacki: And so on. And then the contract lists 10 bills the Republicans plan to pass in the first 100 days. They promised to balance the budget, to institute term limits, and to cut taxes.
Newt Gingrich: We have to deal in a positive way with the challenges of America’s future.
Steve Kornacki: Gingrich has been out on a campaign trail for months, talking up the contract. Already, there’s been plenty of skeptical media coverage.
Newt Gingrich: We’ve had the usual carping, the usual complaining, the usual negativism from an all too cynical Washington press corps, which attacks us for term limits, for balanced —
Steve Kornacki: The main knock on the contract is basically that it’s a gimmick.
Tom Brokaw: As NBC’s Lisa Myers tells us tonight, it is long on promises, but short on sound premises.
Steve Kornacki: But Republicans have the political wind at their back. And to Newt, the 1994 midterms are existential.
Newt Gingrich: As you watch the evening news tonight, as you see the barbarism of Bosnia where snipers shoot children in the street, as you see the devastation of Somalia, as you see the human tragedy of Rwanda where a half million human beings were killed, as you watch the chaos and poverty of Haiti, recognize that if America fails, our children will live on a dark and bloody planet. If the American people accept this contract, we will have begun the journey to renew American civilization. Together, we can renew America.
Steve Kornacki: This is The Revolution. I’m Steve Kornacki.
Episode 5, The Revolution Arrives. It’s the morning of November 8, 1994 and NBC News begins the day long build-up to election night.
Katie Couric: Let’s talk about voter turnout. I know Democrats across the country are praying for good weather and a boring day for O.J. How important is —
Steve Kornacki: For months, the looming O.J. Simpson trial has been the biggest news story in the country. But today, that will take a backseat to politics. On NBC, Katie Couric is talking to the host of Meet the Press, Tim Russert.
Katie Couric: How important is turnout, and why is it particularly important to the Democrats?
Tim Russert: Intensity is all. 75% of the Republic people who say they’re going to vote for Republicans said they are certain to vote. Only 60% who were going to vote for the Democrats say they’re certain to vote. And if that trend continues through today, Katie, it is going to be a huge Republican year.
Steve Kornacki: Everyone knows this is going to be a bad night for Bill Clinton and the Democrats. But the question is just how bad will it be for the Democrats? Most of the attention has been focused on the Senate. Everyone believes the Republicans have a chance to take back the majority there for the first time in eight years. They’ll need to gain seven seats to pull that off. And if they do, that would mark a monumental achievement for them and a crushing blow to Democrats.
Tom Brokaw: Before the night is over, and it shouldn’t be a long one, there could be a fundamental shift in the American political landscape to the right.
Steve Kornacki: But the House, the consensus remains the Democrats will take a big hit, but that their majority will survive. As the polls close, a picture begins to emerge. On NBC, Brian Williams is covering the exit polls, and they show that voters are focused on just what Newt has wanted them to be focused on.
Brian Williams: In the state of Florida, we asked voters for the number one issue bothering them as they went to the polls today. It was crime, followed by education and taxes.
It’s all pocketbook, in the state of New York, government spend.
Well, In New Jersey, “give us less government” was the message
Steve Kornacki: From the White House, Andrea Mitchell is reporting.
Andrea Mitchell: Tonight, the Clinton White House brace for the worst, the possibility that they have not been able to prevent a Republican route. Tom?
Tom Brokaw: Andrea, what is the mood at the White House at this hour?
Andrea Mitchell: It’s pretty grim. There’s sort of gallows humor, because they have been talking to their operatives in various states. The President has been on the phone. They’ve talked to governors around the country. And they’re hearing that Democrats are not turning out enough, so they’re very concerned about this high Republican turnout and what it could mean.
Steve Kornacki: Now, we’re in the thick of election night. Returns are coming in from all over. And in races big and small, Democrats are falling. And in places they never dreamed of being competitive, Republicans are winning, winning big Senate seats, governor’s races and House districts. This is a GOP tide, far bigger and far stronger than just about anyone in Washington has ever seen. In New York, the Democratic governor, Mario Cuomo.
Tom Brokaw: One of the giants of the Democratic Party wanted a fourth term. “No, thank you,” said the voters of New York.
Steve Kornacki: Cuomo is a towering national figure, a mesmerizing orator who just a few years earlier, Democrats had been begging to run for president. He was their brightest national star. But now, just like that, Coumo’s career is over. After three terms as governor, he’s ousted by an obscure former Peekskill Mayor named George Pataki.
Mario Cuomo: What I will do right now is congratulate George Pataki.
Steve Kornacki: On CNN, you can hear his supporters disappointed.
Mario Cuomo: Please, please. No, no, no. It was indeed a long and a tough struggle. George Pataki is the next governor of the state of New York.
Steve Kornacki: In Texas, the Democratic governor, Ann Richards is folksy and popular. A poll during the campaign finds that two-thirds of voters have a favorable view of her. You’re supposed to win with numbers like that. But it’s not enough to overcome the Republican wave. The race is called quickly. And by eight points, Richards loses to George W. Bush, the former president’s son. In a speech broadcast by TV channel WFAA, she consoles the crowd.
Ann Richards: Yeah. I love you guys. A little earlier this evening, I called George W. Bush to congratulate him on a very —
Steve Kornacki: And then there’s Chicago, where Democrat Dan Rostenkowski represents one of the most heavily Democratic districts in America. He’s been in Congress since 1959, and he’s a titanic force in Washington. But Rostenkowski has been snared by scandal and indicted on corruption charges. He’s running for reelection anyway, and he’s still expected to win. This is Chicago. Republicans just don’t win here. But on this night, the unthinkable is happening. An utterly unknown Republican named Michael Patrick Flanagan takes down Rosty.
There’s another loss worth mentioning too, a congresswoman you heard about in our last episode.
Rush Limbaugh: Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, as you know in Pennsylvania, you know she supported President Clinton’s tax hikes so the people in her district gave her —
Steve Kornacki: Limbaugh has a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the fallen Democrats, ready to air the next day..
Rush Limbaugh: We have our final tribute to our lost comrades on the Democratic who can’t by any means, chronicle all of them here, there simply isn’t time, I wish there were but —
Judy Woodruff: CNN is projecting that the Republicans will take control of as many as 50 additional seats in the House of Representatives.
Steve Kornacki: CNN has booked Leon Panetta, who, as you heard in Episode 3, used to be a Democratic member of the House. But on this night, he’s in the White House, where he serves as President Clinton’s Chief of Staff.
Leon Panetta: Well, it’s obviously a disappointing trend, and both the Senate and the House were not willing to surrender either at this point.
Steve Kornacki: Panetta is trying to put on a brave face.
Judy Woodruff: So even though the projections are out there, you’re hanging on to the last minute.
Leon Panetta: Oh, yeah, always.
Joe Scarborough: I was 31 years old and experienced —
Steve Kornacki: This is my MSNBC colleague, Joe Scarborough, co-host of Morning Joe. But in November of 1994, he was a Republican lawyer from the panhandle of Florida, running for a seat in the House.
Joe Scarborough: I was running against a guy who’s a member of, like, the most powerful political family in the area. And the returns started coming in, and they had me early on In the night. I was up like 65% to 35%. And finally, about an hour in, I called the news station WEAR, I said, “Hey, this is Joe Scarborough. I keep looking at these returns. I think you’ve got the numbers mixed up.” And I remember the guy at the desk said, “No, we don’t, Congressman.”
Steve Kornacki: Scarborough goes on to win in a landslide. The night is proving to be every bit as historic as Newt Gingrich claimed it would be. The Republican victories just keep coming, and Gingrich takes to the airwaves. The networks aren’t quite ready to call it yet, but they know and everyone knows where this is going. On CBS, Gingrich strikes a note of humility, in response to Dan Rather.
Dan Rather: Congressman, it’s still early, but it could be that you are poised to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. You’ve worked so long and so hard to make that happen. How does it feel?
Newt Gingrich: I think for me, personally, it feels almost a little bit intimidating, just in the sense to go from being whip to being minority leader would have been a pretty big jump. But to go from being minority whip in the Republican Party to potentially being speaker in one step is an enormous jump.
Steve Kornacki: Gingrich also appears on CNN with Bernard Shaw, who asks a question that’s on the minds of many political observers tonight.
Bernard Shaw: A lot of people are wondering, since you will be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, if all indications hold up, are you going to moderate your rhetoric in the interest of bipartisanship?
Newt Gingrich: Oh, I think, you know, that when you’re a backbencher, or you’re the minority whip, you have a style that reflects one level of responsibility. And you know, if you become Speaker of the House and you are given the honor of serving the country in that position, and I’d be the first Georgian to do so in 103 years, you really, I think, have an obligation to think through how do you best represent the House —
Steve Kornacki: Shaw doesn’t sound quite convinced.
Bernard Shaw: Was that a yes or no?
Newt Gingrich: I think it’s yes. Maybe I’m too much of a history teacher, but I think it’s a yes.
Bernard Shaw: Okay. Thank you, Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich: Thanks.
Steve Kornacki: Back at NBC, Tom Brokaw and Tim Russert are in analysis mode.
Tom Brokaw: What we’re seeing here is an election that has been driven by white males from suburbs, and many of them aligned with the Christian Coalition. And the hot button issues, not too complicated, taxes, crime and violence, and a sense that the American values have been lost somehow.
Tim Russert: When Bill Clinton ran successfully in 1992, he ran as a new Democrat, but the voters are saying tonight is, “No, you tried. You became an old liberal. We don’t want that. We’re going to check you with a Republican Congress.”
Tom Brokaw: Good evening. The polls still are open in five western states. But in the rest of the country, the votes have been counted. And tonight, the sound you hear is a sound of a moving band backing up to the United States Senate, preparing to move in a Republican majority.
Steve Kornacki: That’s Brokaw on the 10:00 p.m. hour on the East Coast. Already, dozens of Democratic House districts have been won by Republicans. And now, another call is being made.
Gil Gutknecht: When Dan Rather of CBS News rather ashen-faced, turned to the camera and he said, “CBS News is now prepared to project that in the 1st congressional district in Minnesota, a seat that had been held by a Democrat, the Republican Gil Gutknecht is going to be the winner —
Steve Kornacki: Gil Gutknecht, you may remember him from Episode 3, where we talked about driving around and listening to Newt’s GOPAC training tapes. As he recalls the broadcast that night, it wasn’t just him.
Gil Gutknecht: And with that win, the Republicans will control the House for the first time in 40 years. That was a moment I will never forget. It almost brings tears to my eyes now.
Steve Kornacki: The Republicans reach the mountaintop. And even after the Democrats officially lose the House, the political humiliation only gets worse. In the state of Washington, late at night, Republicans score the ultimate symbolic victory when they take out the sitting Speaker of the House Tom Foley. A speaker ousted by the voters of his home district? This hasn’t happened since the Civil War. Susan Molinari was a Republican congresswoman from Staten Island in the ‘90s.
Susan Molinari: You know, again, I think it was a Republican revolution, no doubt about it. It was a big red tide. But it was also anti-incumbency, you know, when the Speaker of the House can lose his election.
Steve Kornacki: But that anti-incumbency sentiment, it doesn’t hit both parties. In fact, every single Republican incumbent ends up winning. 34 Democratic incumbents are voted out in total. The new House freshman class will be one of the most lopsided ever seen. It will be made up of 73 Republicans and just 13 Democrats. It looks like Newt Gingrich’s instincts are paying off big.
Tom Brokaw: The crowd could taste its new power. At last, they had a conservative champion who could deliver the long-awaited prize, a Republican U.S. Congress.
Ray LaHood: This was a national election around the idea that the Republicans had a national agenda. Newt was running almost like a presidential campaign.
Steve Kornacki: Ray LaHood is among this giant crop of newly elected Republicans. He ran to replace his old boss, Bob Michel in the 18th District of Illinois. And he’s won easily. When I talked with him, he recalled Gingrich visiting his district that August.
Ray LaHood: We had a huge, huge rally. A lot of people came. Newt was very popular. And the one thing that he said was, “In September, we’re going to get all the candidates and all the Republicans to come and sign the Contract with America, and we will have a national campaign on these 10 items.”
Steve Kornacki: But you didn’t sign the contract, right?
Ray LaHood: No. I was one of three that didn’t sign it. If anybody knows Newt Gingrich, Ray LaHood does. I’ve sat through all of the meetings. I’ve listened to all of his lectures. I knew Newt and how big a gimmick this was, but it worked.
Steve Kornacki: For Republican moderates like LaHood, 1994 would prove to be bittersweet over the long haul. But that’s getting ahead of our story. For conservatives, this night is the blissful culmination of decades of working and of dreaming. I asked Newt’s compatriot, Bob Walker, about it.
What did that night feel like for you? Again, just given how much you had devoted yourself to this project, and all of a sudden, it happens.
Bob Walker: Oh, clearly, I was thrilled. And it was one of the proofs of history that it often takes a long time to create a revolution. But at some point, it all comes together, and you’re in a very different place than you were a few minutes before.
Steve Kornacki: To Bob Walker, Newt Gingrich and most of the class of ’94, the results on November 8th were no fluke. They were proof that a decisive and lasting shift in American politics was finally at hand.
Bob Walker: I think we felt that once we took control, that we were going to have an agenda that would have long term appeal.
Steve Kornacki: It wasn’t just Republicans who were thinking this way either.
Leon Panetta: President Clinton was very depressed about it and knew that he had taken a beating.
Steve Kornacki: This is Leon Panetta again, Clinton’s Chief of Staff. He was watching the election returns at the White House.
Leon Panetta: I think it took him a while to get through it. I think he was really concerned that it would undermine his whole vision of what he wanted to do as president of the United States.
Steve Kornacki: For Dick Gephardt, election night 1994 brought twin shocks, his party losing the house and his boss, Speaker Tom Foley, losing his seat. All of a sudden, this meant that Gephardt would become the Democratic leader, and the first Democrat to hold the title of minority leader in 40 years.
Dick Gephardt: It was a downer. It was disconcerting and I was just worried about how we come back from this. How do we revive the Party? How do we come back out of this horrible loss? And how do we hang on to Bill Clinton two years from that? Because it really looked like from there, that Clinton was toast. I mean, no way he can win in ‘96. So it was really a bleak prospect that we were looking at.
Steve Kornacki: For Democrats, the Clinton presidency had begun in January 1993, with the highest of hopes. And now, less than two years later, they had plunged to unfathomable depths. The permanent Democratic Congress had been felled. And surely, Clinton would be a goner come 1996. And it seemed like so much more too.
Clinton’s 1992 victory suddenly looked like a political accident. After all, he’d only won with 43% of the vote, with independent Ross Perot gobbling up 19%. And for the Republicans, this was a culmination of decades of evolution. Starting with Barry Goldwater’s ill-fated 1964 campaign, the conservative movement had forged itself into the driving force in the Republican Party. Now, it seemed, America was announcing once and for all, that it was a fundamentally conservative country. For Republicans like Newt Gingrich, the future never looked so promising.
After the break, the Democrats tried to fight off extinction.
Steve Kornacki: Newt Gingrich had long argued that Republicans would be rewarded if they could just show that they understood, respected and shared the country’s core values, and the Democrats didn’t. When he first came to the House in 1979, even many of his fellow Republicans had rolled their eyes at him. But when the country woke up on November 9, 1994, it looked like he’d been right all along.
Bryant Gumbel: Welcome to Today on this Wednesday morning, the morning after an election that brought us a stunning amount of Republican wins. The extent of the GOP —
Steve Kornacki: When it’s all settled, Republicans have blown well past that magic 40 seat number they needed to win the House. Their net gain ends up being a staggering 54 seats. It’s the most to change hands in nearly half a century. For Democrats, the electoral carnage crosses demographic lines and extends into every region. Newt Gingrich joins the Today Show.
Newt Gingrich: I think the American people at every level last night, sent a signal for less government and lower taxes, and a change of direction.
Steve Kornacki: And then on a stage in Atlanta, with red, white and blue balloons behind him, the soon-to-be Speaker holds a press conference.
Newt Gingrich: Now, as a historian, every time you’ve had an election, that clear-cut the word that has always been used to describe it as a mandate. Even if this is not a mandate to move in a particular direction, I would like somebody to explain to me what a mandate would look like.
Steve Kornacki: And what is that mandate for? Well, most immediately, there’s the Contract with America. Gingrich makes clear that the new Republican majority will follow through on its commitment and put it up for a vote within the first 100 days. For emphasis, he holds up the issue of TV Guide from September, with a full page ad that features the contract.
Newt Gingrich: The president attacked the contract every way he could. The White House distorted it. The liberal columnist and editorial writers went crazy about it. At the end of that process, the American people voted for the side that had offered a contract and against the side that had opposed the contract.
Steve Kornacki: But of course, the Republican revolution is about much more than just the contract, and this is hardly lost on Democrats. For the previous two years, they have done or tried to do big things. They’ve raised taxes in the name of fighting the deficit. They’ve passed gun control laws, one requiring a waiting period to buy a handgun, the other a ban on assault weapons. They’ve tried and failed to overhaul the nation’s health insurance system. And every step of the way, they’ve been met with signs of a big brewing backlash, one that has now culminated in a political revolution.
Bill Clinton: Ladies and gentlemen —
Steve Kornacki: Bill Clinton steps in front of reporters. He looks exhausted.
Bill Clinton: We were held accountable yesterday, and I accept my share of the responsibility in the results of the elections.
Steve Kornacki: He defends his record, but acknowledges that the voters aren’t buying it. He says they sent this message.
Bill Clinton: Even if the deficit’s down, the government’s smaller, more’s being invested in education, the crime bill passed, and the economy is growing, we still feel insecure. We don’t feel that our incomes are going up, that our jobs are more stable, that our neighborhoods are safer, that the fabric of American life is growing more civilized and more loved.
Steve Kornacki: He’s trying to strike a conciliatory tone, like when he addresses the contract.
Crime Bill: There are some things in that contract that I like. I hope that Congress will give me the line item veto and do it quickly. If they do, we’ll bring this deficit down even more quickly. I hope that we will have aggressive efforts to work together on welfare reform. I hope we will be able to still reduce several areas of federal spending and continue this whole reinventing government effort.
Steve Kornacki: You can hear it in their echoes of his 1992 campaign, when Clinton had run as a different kind of Democrat, a moderate, that image lay in tatters now. But already, he is searching for a way to recapture it, to stage a political comeback.
Reporter: Now that your Party is a minority in Congress and in the state Houses, what do Democrats have to do to avoid becoming a permanent minority party?
Bill Clinton: I think we have to, first of all, as I said, take a little nap, take a little sleep, take a little rest, let the Republicans enjoy their victories, and analyze why they won and ask ourselves to what extent do we also believe some of the things that voters believe?
Steve Kornacki: I asked Andrea Mitchell about the feeling inside the Clinton White House.
Was it even conceivable to them that it would be as bad as it was?
Andrea Mitchell: My recollection is that they were not prepared for that. I don’t think any of us were. I mean, it was devastating. Bill Clinton did not think of himself as a loser, and he was so chastened. And one of the things that came out of it was him recasting himself.
Dick Gephardt: I came back to Washington at some point and we had meetings on how do we recover from this.
Steve Kornacki: Dick Gephardt watched as Clinton tried to pivot back to the political center,
Dick Gephardt: He made kind of a turn to the right to try to pull back some of those voters that we had lost in the ‘94 elections, so that he could get reelected. I forget the name of his pollsters, but they were really advocating to him that he turns to the right on a lot of issues, welfare reform, other things that would give him a better chance of getting independents and soft Republicans again to still vote for him.
Steve Kornacki: Gephardt remembers that as the new Democratic leader, he was confronted with questions that no one in his position had had to deal with in 40 years.
Dick Gephardt: What is our agenda? Are we just going to fight their agenda? And how do we do that? And then do we have a positive agenda that we want to propose even though we can’t pass it, that will be our identity? And so I reached out to a lot of advertising people, market marketing people, I even went back to Anheuser-Busch, my friends in St. Louis, and I got them, they lend us park time for nothing, some of their great marketing people to come up with ideas for how we can present the Party’s message. So we were really busy doing a lot of different things to try to make a comeback.
Steve Kornacki: I got the chance to speak with another Democrat who was also in the House back then, and still is today. Steny Hoyer of Maryland is now the House majority leader. And thinking back to those days after the 1994 election, he told me he remembers a different feel in Congress.
Steny Hoyer: When the Republican, the new members came for orientation, and you walk down the hall and they saw you or you saw them, they almost always either looked away or were not happy. And Gingrich had sold them on the fact that we were not good for America, had misused the taxpayers’ money and adopted policies that were socialist in nature. There was a real sense of these new members that we were not worth talking to. We were the enemy. So it was a real tense time.
Steve Kornacki: And in Hoyer’s view, you can draw a straight line between Newt Gingrich becoming speaker and the Republican Party in the House today.
Steny Hoyer: We come to a point where the politics of the issue for our Republican friends are all about whether it helps or hurts Democrats. That was Gingrich’s theory.
Vin Weber: And like all the rest of you, I haven’t stopped smiling for a month.
Steve Kornacki: So now, it’s December 1994. It’s the transition period. Republicans have won that House, but they won’t formally take over until January. And the incoming freshmen have come to Baltimore for their orientation, 73 Republicans in all, one of the largest classes ever. It’s the final night and they’re all gathered at a dinner.
Vin Weber is emceeing the event. He’s now a private citizen. He retired from the House in 1992. But he’s still a power player in D.C. and he’s close to the new Republican leadership. He has worked for this achievement, a Republican House as hard as just about anyone.
Vin Weber: I spent the last three days with this freshman class, and it is the first time in my life that I have felt like a moderate.
Steve Kornacki: He’s introducing the keynote speaker, someone who inspired more than a few of these Republicans to run for Congress, someone who demonstrated for them how to make their arguments, and who offered them daily motivation on the campaign trail. And no, it isn’t Newt Gingrich.
Vin Weber: I was sitting with my friend and I said, “Gee, what should I say about Rush?” And he said, “Vin, what you should say is thank you, Rush, for giving us all the courage to take back our country.” My friends, it’s a great pleasure to introduce Rush Limbaugh.
Steve Kornacki: The freshman Republicans have decided to make Rush Limbaugh an honorary member of their class. They’ve given him a pin that says, “majority maker,” and they’ve asked him to deliver a pep talk.
Rush Limbaugh: They asked me to keep it short because there’s a lot going on, so don’t screw up. Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Steve Kornacki: He tells the freshman to hang in there. The media will put them under a microscope. They’ll be, quote, “targeted.” But remember, these are heady days for Republicans. The revolution has filled them with boundless self-confidence. And in that spirit, Rush closes with this piece of advice.
Rush Limbaugh: Leave some liberals alive. I think we should have at least on every college campus, one communist professor and two liberal professors, so we never forget who these people are and what they stand for. We can always show our children what they were and what they want living fossils, ladies and gents. Keep them living fossils.
Steve Kornacki: It’s January 4, 1995, opening day of the 104th Congress, and Newt Gingrich’s dream is about to come true.
Clerk: The House will be in order. Mr. Doorkeeper.
Doorkeeper: Mr. Clerk, the Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich, representative from Georgia, and the Escort Committee.
Steve Kornacki: He’s walking down the aisle, shaking hands left and right. The House chamber is packed with family and friends. Members have brought their kids, dressed in their best suits and dresses. Everyone is on their feet and clapping. Gingrich heads to the rostrum. Dick Gephardt is following behind him, and he speaks first.
Dick Gephardt: Ladies and gentlemen of the House —
Steve Kornacki: Gephardt is now the minority leader, and it’s his job to hand over the gavel on behalf of his Party.
Dick Gephardt: As you might imagine, this is not a moment that I had been waiting for.
Steve Kornacki: Gephardt smiles ruefully then looks down.
Dick Gephardt: We may not all agree with today’s changing of the guard. We may not all like it. But we enact the people’s will with dignity and honor and pride.
Steve Kornacki: Vin Weber was in the chamber that day.
Vin Weber: I remember wondering if Gephardt would actually be nice about it. I didn’t doubt that he would turn the gavel over, but I wondered how he would handle it. I like Dick Gephardt, but you never know.
Dick Gephardt: I really dreaded that day, and I really worked hard on that speech to say what I thought needed to be said and what I wanted to say. And look, doing that was the highest act that you do in a democracy, which is the peaceful, respectful transfer of power.
We both have to rise above partisanship. We have to work together where we can and where we must.
It all goes back to the idea that if the process is fair, people trust the process and are willing to grudgingly accept that result. And that’s what we were doing in turning the gavel over to the Republicans.
Steve Kornacki: At the end of his speech. Gephardt picks up the wooden speaker’s gavel and holds it in his hand.
Dick Gephardt: With resignation, but with resolve, I hereby end 40 years of Democratic rule of this house.
Vin Weber: He didn’t have to say that he could have simply said that “I’d like to give this gavel to the next Speaker of the House.” But he mentioned that it was the first time in 40 years, which was important to all of us that had worked for it for a long time.
Dick Gephardt: I now have the high honor and distinct privilege to present to the House of Representatives, our new Speaker, the gentleman from Georgia, Newt Gingrich.
Newt Gingrich: Let me say first of all, that I’m very deeply grateful to my good friend Dick Gephardt. I couldn’t help but when my side maybe overreacted to your statement, “ending 40 years of democratic rule,” that I couldn’t help it look over at Bob Michel who has often been up here and who knows that everything Dick said was true, that this is difficult and painful to lose. And on my side of the aisle, we have, for 20 elections, been on the losing side. And yet, there is something so wonderful about the process by which a free people decides things.
Steve Kornacki: This is a different version of Newt Gingrich than most folks in this Chamber have ever seen, a far cry from the backbencher railing in late night special order speeches or the voice on those GOPAC tapes. He’s trying to sound statesmanlike. On this very morning, he’s told reporters that he’s, quote, “trying to change my style somewhat.” addressing the House, the Republican House, he does pull out that well-worn copy of TV Guide with the Contract of America in it. But also, he speaks highly of Democrats.
Newt Gingrich: And no Republican here should kid themselves about it. The greatest leaders and fighting for an integrated America in the 20th century, were in the Democratic Party. The fact is, it was the liberal wing of the Democratic Party that ended segregation. The fact is that it was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who gave hope to a nation that was in despair and put a slit into dictatorship.
Steve Kornacki: And he closes by echoing d Dick Gephardt’s call for bipartisanship.
Newt Gingrich: If each of us will reach out prayerfully and try to genuinely understand the other, if we’ll recognize that in this building, we symbolize America writ small, that we have an obligation to talk with each other, then I think a year from now, we can look on the 104th Congress as a truly amazing institution. Without regard to party, without regard to ideology, we can say here America comes to work, and here we are preparing for those children a better future. Thank you. Good luck and God bless you. And let me now call on —
Steve Kornacki: Then, the swearing in.
John Dingell: And if you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter. So help you God.
Newt Gingrich: I do.
John Dingell: Congratulations, Mr. Speaker.
Steve Kornacki: After that, Gingrich and the Republicans immediately go to work.
Newt Gingrich: The House has now been in session for some 14 hours and 25 minutes —
Bob Walker: About half of the whole contract was enacted that day.
Steve Kornacki: This is Bob Walker, Gingrich’s longtime ally.
Bob Walker: Because most of it had to do with changing the rules of the House to do things like assure an accurate congressional record, you know.
Steve Kornacki: Remember, the Republicans have promised to pass what they call major reforms on the very first day of Congress, and they do. There’s a vote to slash committee staffs by a third, another to eliminate completely some subcommittees, and to ban proxy voting in committees. That is the practice of allowing members to cast votes on behalf of other members. They also pass a rule of limiting the House Speaker to four terms.
Bob Walker: Newt presided for a couple of minutes. And then they put me in the chair and I was there for a long, long time because it took us well into the middle of the night.
Steve Kornacki: For Newt Gingrich, this day is a grand fulfilment. Way, way back, he set out to become a shaper of history, then set his sights on politics, made his way to the House after three tries, and then set a goal of leading his Party to the majority. And now, it’s official. He’s made history and he’s a historic figure. Newt’s rhetoric on this day may be bipartisan, but his mission now is to complete the conservative revolution. There will be confrontation, Gingrich knows this, but he’s confident that he’ll prevail. This is what 1994 has taught him.
But 1995 has some things to teach him too. Already, the post-election period had not been smooth for Newt. There was, ironically enough, a week’s long uproar over a book deal, a $4.5 million advance that Gingrich finally had to give up under pressure. And his mouth has gotten him in trouble too, like when he offhandedly suggested that a quarter of the Clinton White House had used drugs, and mused about putting more children in orphanages. He’s learning that his new role will come with a level of scrutiny he’s never before faced.
And sure enough, even while he’s being handed the Speaker’s gavel, there’s a new scandal to contend with. The day before he’s sworn in, CBS news releases the transcript of an explosive interview. Anchor Connie Chung has paid a visit to Newt’s parents, Kathleen and Bob Gingrich at their home in Pennsylvania.
Connie Chung: Hello, Mr. Gingrich.
Bob Gingrich: Yes.
Steve Kornacki: In the segment, she sits down with the couple and probes them about Newt’s thinking.
Connie Chung: What has Newt told you about President Clinton?
Kathleen Gingrich: Nothing. And I can’t tell you what he said about Hillary.
Connie Chung: You can’t?
Kathleen Gingrich: I can’t.
Connie Chung: Why don’t you just whisper it to me, just between you and me?
Kathleen Gingrich: She’s a bitch. That’s the only thing he ever said about her. But I think they had some meeting, you know, and she takes over.
Steve Kornacki: The fallout is instant. There’s intense debate over the ethics of how Chung handled the interview. Gingrich himself calls Chung, quote, “unprofessional,” and quote, “disreputable.” Chung addresses the outcry.
Connie Chung: There’s been more talk about how Mrs. Gingrich came to tell us what she says is her son’s five letter opinion about the First Lady, then about her son’s opinion itself. Mrs. Gingrich was sitting before three cameras and television lights, with a microphone on. It was clear that what she said would be broadcast.
Steve Kornacki: But the ethics debate aside, what people heard Newt’s mother say can’t be unheard. And the crudeness and vulgarity only reinforced the negative image that Gingrich is quickly earning with the public. Officially, he’s been on the job less than 24 hours, but already, the political damage is accumulating, and it wouldn’t stop. Ultimately, the transition from congressional rabble-rouser to national leader would prove too much for Gingrich to pull off. Newt would have his moments, but controversy so much of it self-inflicted, would always follow.
He would get his grand confrontation with Clinton and the Democrats over the size and scope of government. It would come in the fall of 1995 over the issue of Medicare funding, but it wouldn’t end the way Newt had imagined. Instead, it would give new political life to Bill Clinton and cause irreparable harm to Gingrich. By the fall of 1996, Clinton in his campaign would be featuring Newt’s name in just about every television ad, linking him to the actual Republican nominee, Bob Dole, as if they were running mates and it would work.
Two years after the Republican revolution, after all those questions about whether President Clinton and the Democratic Party had any future at all, Clinton would be reelected with ease. And two years later, Newt Gingrich would be gone from the House for good, forced out by his own Party, after leading an impeachment drive against Clinton that backfired with the public. Still, while it may not have done so in the way Newt imagined, the Republican revolution of 1994 did alter American politics profoundly, permanently, and in ways that we can see all around us today.
Joe Scarborough: There will be people that say that I bear a responsibility being part of the ‘94 class, that that’s when politics started to get a bit uglier. I think in retrospect, looking back, I think they’re right.
Steve Kornacki: Joe Scarborough, former Republican congressman, is just one of many people who was reassessing what happened in 1994, the impact, especially on the Republican Party, which Joe left in 2017.
Joe Scarborough: I don’t understand why they sold their political soul, but they did. And that’s the world we live in, I suppose, you know.
Steve Kornacki: In our final episode of The Revolution, we’ll consider the long-term impact of 1994. We made multiple requests to speak with Newt Gingrich for this podcast, but he was never made available. And then, after this series was released, we did hear from him. You’ll hear that conversation in episode 7.
From MSNBC, this is the fifth of six episodes of The Revolution. If you’d like what you’ve heard, please give us a 5-star rating and a review on Apple Podcasts. And be sure to tell your friends and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening right now.
The Revolution was written and hosted by me, Steve Kornacki. The series is produced by Frannie Kelley, Ursula Sommer and Adam Noboa. It’s edited by Alison MacAdam. Our associate producer is Eva Ruth Moravec. Sound designed by Ramtin Arablouei. Bryson Barnes is our technical director and he wrote our music. Soraya Gage is our executive producer, and Madeleine Haeringer is our head of Editorial.