DATE: Tuesday, July 15, 1997                TAG: 9707140214

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Perry Morgan 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

IN STICKING TO ITS GUNS, GOP SHOOTS ITSELF IN THE FOOT IT'S BILL CLINTON WHO GETS CREDIT FOR HIS FORCED CONVERSION FROM BIG-GOVERNMENT REMEDIES AND PERHAPS EVEN FOR, OF ALL THINGS, WELFARE REFORM.

Republicans generally believe the federal government should do less, and that well - excepting, of course, the Congress. That body continues to grope for a long-term budget agreement with conflicting aims of balancing a budget five years hence and cutting taxes along the way.

Never mind that a robust economy, left alone, might produce a balanced budget three years earlier. And without adding convolutions to a tax code which Republicans like to deride as, well, convoluted.

Weeks ago, when their budget pact was a mere sketch, Newt Gingrich, John Kasich and Bill Clinton hailed it as ``historic'' and ``profound.'' Which meant mostly that both parties perceived political advantage in making the easy thing (cutting taxes) seem responsible (balancing the budget).

The pact in fact was a warmed-over stew of pureed revenue forecasts poured over chunky assumptions. Its real merit had nothing to do with policy but lay rather in promising relief from budget brinksmanship that twice led to government shutdowns and loosened the GOP's grip on Congress.

Even that promise is fading. The Democrats are blaming Republicans for favoring well-off investors. Republicans accuse the Democrats of wanting to lavish tax-credit checks on the ``working poor'' who pay no income taxes to begin with. ``That is welfare,'' Gingrich told David Broder of The Washington Post, and maybe, finally, a winning issue for the GOP.

It's a loser really, and so is his party's basic premise regarding taxes - e.g., any tax hike is bad; any tax cut is good; both notions must be believed as gospel if Republicans are to be distinguishable from Democrats. This has been a fighting faith for Gingrich. If he strays from it, he is lashed as a heretic by his own brethren.

But the faith goes one way and the facts another. Gingrich and Co. punished George Bush for accepting Democratic demands for tax increases to combat deficits, and unanimously opposed Bill Clinton's efforts along the same line. Under weight of the increases the economy would crash, they said, and unless the capital gains tax was whacked, the stock market would go kerflooey.

But booms on both Wall Street and Main Street have pushed Clinton's poll ratings to a record 63 percent. A growing economy returned Clinton to office despite Bob Dole's ``trust-me'' promise to cut taxes and balance the budget. Newt Gingrich himself lost badly in a showdown fight to finance a tax cut with income transfers from the ``working poor'' and other large constituencies.

Is it not time for Republicans to raise a different banner? With deficits falling faster than expected - from $290 billion in 1992 to perhaps $45 billion this fiscal year - can they not let well enough alone on the fiscal front?

One understands, of course, that they, like the Democrats, are trying to mirror the interests of their chief constituencies, but there's clear evidence that hard-edge ideology doesn't resonate with most voters. By hewing to failed prophecies, the GOP has managed to obscure its genuine achievement. It's Bill Clinton who gets credit for his forced conversion from big-government remedies and perhaps even for, of all things, welfare reform.

Personality plays a big part (the pairing of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey makes for bad karma), but so does a rigid party doctrine which might benefit, as have the Democrats, from a measure of reinvention. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu