Jack Kemp explains that liberal Congressman Tom Campbell (R., Calif.) represents “what Colin Powell calls the Lincoln wing of the Republican Party.” Make that the Lincoln Continental wing, Jack.
Yes, the House Ethics Committee essentially cleared Newt Gingrich on all but one of the sixty counts of ethics complaints against him. It’s also true that the one outstanding question—whether tax-exempt foundations violated their tax status by donating to his college course—involves an eye-glazing technicality. But Republicans are fooling themselves if they think any of this matters. The Speaker suffered a grievous blow when the Ethics Committee agreed to appoint an outside counsel to investigate that last count. Ethics Committee Chairman Nancy Johnson (R., Conn.) apparently didn’t realize it, but any other result would have been preferable. In an outside counsel, Democrats get what they’ve always wanted, a gung-ho investigator who will push to expand his inquiry until he finds the one violation that provides the leverage for forcing Gingrich from office. In this overtly political fight, Republicans must start punching back. First, they should insist that the outside counsel be a tax lawyer rather than a prosecutor willing to become a Grand Inquisitor. Next, the GOP needs to defend the Speaker more generally. Republicans were encouraged when the exquisitely moderate Tom Campbell trounced an anti-Newt candidate in a December 12 special election. But GOP freshmen won’t have Campbell’s luxury of distancing themselves from the Speaker. Their reputations depend, at least partly, on resisting the Democrats’ effort to decapitate the new majority through the theer force of negative press and ethics smears. This time it’s the counter-revolution that mans the guillotine. Republicans must blunt its blade.
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