Adventures of a Republican Revolutionary

[Casino67]

NYT:

 

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Published: November 03, 1996

 

 

Mark W. Neumann, A FRESHMAN REPUBLICAN Congressman from Janesville, Wis., is a sometimes-mutinous soldier in the army of Newt Gingrich who believes that extremism in the pursuit of deficit reduction is no vice. He also has a tendency to yell at his constituents, which is inadvisable, considering that he rather desperately needs their votes on Tuesday. This penchant of Neumann's is on display during a recent campaign stop at the Sons of Norway lodge in downtown Janesville, a monochromatic American everywhere of a city an hour and a half west of Milwaukee.

 

The Golden K Kiwanis club is holding its monthly breakfast meeting here, and Neumann waits impatiently as the Kiwanians sing Kiwanis songs and the club president tells the ritual ''Lars and Sven'' joke. Neumann, a 6-foot-2, straw-thin 42-year-old, is wired this morning on caffeine and righteous anger, and when his turn finally comes he careers into his presentation. A former math teacher, he always brings along a dozen charts and an overhead projector. His theme is simple: Washington is choking America with debt. The subtext is also simple: he is ready to rescue America from Washington.

He unleashes a river of numbers: Medicare numbers, deficit numbers, Social Security numbers. It is too early in the morning for debt charts, but the Kiwanians are facing the unthinkable -- a math teacher with actual power -- and they are cowed into listening. ''This debt can crush us,'' Neumann says. ''Do I have a great deal of confidence that the budget will really be balanced by 2002? I know I'm a Republican and I know what I'm supposed to say, but I think that if the Republicans are in power, our chances are about 50-50, and if the Democrats are in power, it'd be about 50-50 too. We're going to have to get over this Democrat-Republican stuff if we're to get over this problem.''

 

The lodge is filled with Republicans who appear bewildered by Neumann's attack on his own party. They grow more confused when Neumann answers a question about the Dole-Kemp tax-cut proposal this way: ''It looks like a good plan on paper, but if you hear skepticism in my voice, it's because in Washington, it's not unusual to do the easy thing and not do the hard part. The easy thing would be to cut taxes. The hard part is to do deficit reduction, which means spending cuts. You will not see me vote for a tax cut if Medicare is hurt, Social Security or veterans' benefits are hurt or if the deficit goes up.''

 

The next question lights Neumann's fuse. ''Isn't it true,'' an elderly man asks, ''that it was when Reagan was President and Dole was in the Senate that the debt went up?''