TAMING THE TROOPS

By Richard Lacayo

Newt Gingrich, once the naughtiest kid in town, now chief grownup of the House, is finding out what elders are always discovering about the generation behind them: kids just won't listen. When the Republicans flooded Congress a few weeks ago, nearly a third of their House majority was supplied by 73 freshmen. The shock troops of the revolution, they were hard to the right and unbeholden to the old order. Almost half of them had never held office of any kind before. Even so, they were presumably obliged to the new Speaker, who had nurtured them for years via his political-action committee, GOPAC, campaigned in most of their districts and given them an unusual number of choice committee positions. With his ``Newtoids'' securely behind him, the thinking went, the biggest problem for Gingrich would be to keep more moderate Republicans from drifting into compromising positions with the Democrats.

It's not working out that way. While even Bill Clinton is moving so briskly to the middle that his State of the Union speech last week gave Gingrich dozens of moments to stand up and applaud, the new Speaker is running into disputes with his own followers. Just hours before Thursday's final vote on the balanced-budget amendment, Gingrich had to summon a dozen freshmen House members to his office to pull them in line on one of the most important measures of the G.O.P. ``Contract with America.'' The freshmen were refusing to vote for a watered-down version of the budget amendment that did not include one of their favorite aspects: a requirement that any future tax increases would have to be approved by a three-fifths majority in both houses. In the Speaker's office, under an ornate chandelier and the inflatable toy Tyrannosaurus rex with an American flag in its claw, Gingrich held forth on the subject of unity. But the only way he eventually got it was by promising the freshmen an amendment of their own on the tax issue.

It may be a sign of rebelliousness to come. A fourth of the way through the benchmark 100-day push for their contract, Republicans can count a major House victory with the passage last week of the balanced-budget amendment, which will require an estimated $1 trillion in spending cuts by 2002. It must still pass the Senate, where Democrats want Republicans to detail in advance just where the cuts will fall, and then be approved by at least 38 state legislatures, a more iffy prospect. But whatever the pitfalls ahead, it was the bumpy process of getting it through the House that surprised Gingrich, who had to squash a rebellion among first-termers who don't like the sound of terms like compromise and half a loaf.

That uprising isn't the only one. Driven equally by ideological verve and concerns about the voters back home, the freshmen are also threatening to walk away from a Mexican bailout supported by Republican leaders in both houses; to force the most stringent version of term limits, over the objections of party elders; and to push for a repeal of the assault-weapons ban, a huge fight the Speaker doesn't want just yet. ``Some of these guys just have no fear,'' says an awestruck Republican House veteran. ``Some of them look at us like we're the problem.''

Though they are overwhelmingly white and male, the House freshmen--who include an obstetrician, a florist, an accountant, an insurance agent and a onetime member of Sonny and Cher--can claim to be something different from the usual crop of lawyers. They are the Jacobins in this revolution. After dropping out of college in 1980, Texas Representative Steve Stockman spent a summer homeless on the streets of Fort Worth. Eventually he found shelter with relatives and a job in a steel mill and made his way back to college. In his ear- ly 20s, Tennessee's Zach Wamp struggled back from an addiction to cocaine. The electoral wave of last November, he says, ``was so big that some people crashed ashore who normally would not have been here.''

In the long run, the stress lines in Gingrich's own party may be a bigger problem for Gingrich than whatever opposition is presented by Bill Clinton, who is attempting the neat trick of saying ``Me too'' and ``I'm not Newt'' in the same breath. In his 81-minute State of the Union address, the President endorsed many Republican ideas but portrayed himself as the defender of common sense and the humane American spirit, tacking just to the left of Gingrich and positioning himself as perhaps the most moderate candidate in 1996. But Democrats took some comfort from signs of dissension in the G.O.P. ``There's a little bit of an implosion going on right now,'' said a Cabinet member, looking hopeful. ``It's easy to throw bombs, but the process of taking responsibility is harder.''

Even from its first giddy day in power, the House leadership was smelling trouble. On Jan. 4, when majority whip Tom DeLay of Texas did a head count of support for the balanced-budget amendment, he came up as many as 30 votes short. Depending on how the amendment was worded, Republicans would lose either moderates or radicals from their ranks. The freshmen were firmly behind Gingrich in supporting the version that not only mandated a balanced budget by 2002 but also required the three-fifths majority to raise taxes. Told that opposition from Democrats and many moderate Republicans made that provision a sure loser, some freshmen preferred to scrap the budget amendment altogether. With conservative talk-show hosts working the microphones to support them, they balked at leadership pleas to compromise their notions of muscular Republicanism. ``They were very upset with us,'' says DeLay. ``We went through about a week and a half of gnashing of teeth.''

To hold their support, Gingrich had to sign on to a proposal by Arizona first-termer John Shadegg. At the Thursday-night meeting in his office, the Speaker promised that on April 15 of next year--tax day, and just six months before the election--Republicans will offer the supermajority as a separate constitutional amendment. Though it's not likely to pass then either, a floor vote should provide priceless ammunition for campaign commercials against Democrats who oppose it. Meanwhile, after their preferred version was defeated in an early vote, virtually all the freshmen lined up to pass the budget amendment in a 300-to-132 vote.

``All freshmen come in with a greater sense of wanting to make their mark now,'' says Republican John Boehner of Ohio, class of '90, who in his first year helped push the House Bank scandal into high visibility. The G.O.P. first-timers are also intent on not repeating what they see as the mistake of the large number of Democratic freshmen who arrived with Clinton. Unlike the Watergate class of '74, who successfully reduced the power of seniority in the Democratic caucus, the class of '92 were too submissive when their demands for further reform were quashed by party chiefs in Congress. ``What [the Democratic leadership] should have done was listen to those freshmen,'' says Boehner. ``If they had, they'd probably still be in control.''

It makes a difference, however, that the Democrats of '92 were trying to push their party to the middle. The G.O.P. newcomers are pulling an already conservative party further to the right. The question is whether on some issues they will drag it too far for most voters to follow. In a Time/CNN poll, 71% of those surveyed agree with the freshmen in opposing loan guarantees for Mexico. But just 22% want to see the assault-weapons ban overturned.

One reason Gingrich needed the budget amendment, which polls show is one of the two most popular provisions of the contract, is that term limits, the other one, is starting to look like a lost cause. While in the last Congress Democrats were the most prominent opponents of limiting service, much of the stately harrumphing this time is coming from figures within the Speaker's own, newly empowered party. Three versions of the proposed constitutional amendment are competing in the House, all of them limiting Senators to only two six-year terms but permitting House members from six to 12 years of service. Freshmen, for whom six years always seems a long time, are supporting the strictest version.

On the Mexican loan guarantees, the newcomers aren't buying at all. Though the plan involves not direct loans but only guarantees--meaning the U.S. would be called upon to come up with the $40 billion only if Mexico defaulted on loans extended to it by private lenders--the deal is a hard sell to voters skeptical about helping either foreign nations or the Wall Street investors whose money is still in Mexican securities. At a press conference last week at which anti-bailout freshmen teamed with conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, first-termer Wamp promised to vote ``with the people of east Tennessee this time and not with [Fed Chairman] Mr. Greenspan.'' And while that puts the freshmen on the opposite side from their own leadership as well, Stockman says, ``In reality, I'm trying to save them from themselves.''

Many Democrats, who had to be dragged into NAFTA, also oppose the deal, which Clinton has had difficulty selling to Congress and the general public. Though Gingrich supports the Mexico plan, its dwindling chances of success leave him indisposed to force it on the newcomers. ``If we can't find a way to satisfy their beliefs, then they shouldn't vote for it,'' Gingrich told Time. ``I don't think we ought to go to members and say, `Why don't you learn to sell out? You've already been here a month.' ''

In the case of the assault-weapons ban, the Speaker acted more aggressively. Though Republican leaders know they have to allow a repeal vote eventually, Clinton's State of the Union vow to fight a rollback caused the National Rifle Association to demand a quick show of strength in the House, something Gingrich fears will turn voters off before the 100 days are up. Determined not to let the issue derail his contract, Gingrich came up with a compromise that the N.R.A. reluctantly accepted: February hearings that would allow progun groups to speak, followed by a vote sometime in the spring.

While the new crop of G.O.P. House members is still devoted to Gingrich, it can nonetheless be counted on to cause him discomfort in the months ahead. For their second hundred days in office, the freshmen are working on campaign- finance reform bills, an issue that can make more senior members of both parties squirm. ``That's going to cause some fuss among some of the people who are here, because they like things the way they are,'' says Representative Sue Myrick of North Carolina.

The Speaker--class of '78--says he's not afraid that his followers will get out ahead of him. At heart he's still a freshman too. ``It is highly unlikely they will hold my feet to the fire,'' he insists. ``I'm the guy that pours the coal on.''

Still, there is a massive culture gap between the congressional generations. New member Sonny Bono admonished his colleagues, most of them lawyers, for dallying over words when the public was crying for police protection. ``Sometimes I find it rather disgusting. And it goes on and on,'' Bono said. ``And pompously.'' His remark, coming as it did in the course of a discussion of constitutional rights, was met with stunned bipartisan silence. Nobody ever said the revolution was going to be easy.

-Reported by Nina Burleigh, James Carney and Karen Tumulty/Washington

With reporting by NINA BURLEIGH, JAMES CARNEY AND KAREN TUMULTY/WASHINGTON