A new breed of politician?

• Author: Bresler, Robert J.

AS A CONSEQUENCE of the November election, the energy in Washington should move from the White House to the House of Representatives. The new Republican majority in Congress could alter the culture of the nation's capital. The 1994 election bears little resemblance to the two Republican Congressional victories in 1946 and 1952. Those brought in a majority with little on their minds other than to slow down the momentum of the New Deal/Fair Deal reforms. They were interludes in a liberal era and marked only a footnote to history. The Republican victories in the Senate in 1980 hastened only two parts of the Reagan reforms--tax cuts and the defense buildup--but made little impact on the growth of domestic spending.

The 1994 returns fly in the face of the old bromide that all politics are local. The Republican strategy, designed by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R.-Ga.), the new Speaker of the House, and built upon the party's Contract with America, was to nationalize deliberately the focus of the election and the House races, in particular.

The campaign, despite the excessive negative ads, did not concentrate on Whitewater, the Mike Espy affair, Paula Jones, or Troopergate. Gingrich deliberately put his own party and its candidates on the line to produce alternatives. The Contract with America addresses 10 points: a balanced-budget amendment; limiting court appeals in death penalty cases; cut-off of welfare benefits after two years under Aid to Families with Dependent Children; a nationwide tracking system to find parents who fail to make child support payments; a $500 tax credit for every child in addition to the present exemption; restricting the ability to the United Nations to command U.S. troops; increasing the earnings limit from $11,000 to $30,000 for Social Security recipients; a capital gains cut; tort reform, allowing judges to require losers in lawsuits to pay the legal fees of both sides and limiting punitive damage awards; and Congressional term limits, restricting both House and Senate members to 12 years.

The Republican candidates did not claim, as many have done in the past, that they could do better for their district. In fact, Rep. George Nethercutt (R.-Wash.), who defeated former Speaker of the House Tom Foley, admitted that he could not match Foley in bringing pork back to the district. His appeal was a more generalized one--to reduce the scope and size of the Federal government.

The Republican leadership is claiming that the freshman...