The New New Newt
Sixteen years after the Gingrich revolution, Rep. Kevin McCarthy is concocting his own multipoint plan to win over America and take back the House.

Top to bottom: Ryan Kelly / Congressional Quartly-Getty Images; Erik Freeland / Corbis
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (top); former House Speaker New Gingrich
By
Michael Hirsh | NEWSWEEK
Published Mar 12, 2010
Rep. Kevin McCarthy laughs at the idea that he's trying to resurrect the "Contract With America." "No sequel, outside of
The Godfather II, ever did better than the original," he jokes. But the second-term congressman from Bakers-field, Calif., a sunny salt-of-the-earth type who used to run a sandwich shop, has been tasked with orchestrating the next Republican revolution. So he's doing his best to learn from the last one. McCarthy's project has a slightly different name—the "Commitment to -America"—but his mission is essentially the same as the one pursued by GOP revolutionaries in 1994: to come up with a simple program for action that will redefine the Republican Party and bring it back to power.
"One of the things I first did, I went back and talked to everybody" involved with the 1994 campaign, says McCarthy, one of the party's self-described "young guns." Newt Gingrich, the mastermind of the '94 GOP takeover of the House, was at the top of his list. McCarthy wanted to hear how he might repeat Gingrich's success, but without seeming like a tiresome impersonator. "This is a different world," says Gingrich. "Every dance has its own rules. The anger is much greater now than it was before. People are tired of the whole process in Washington."
There are, it is true, unmistakable similarities between the two eras. The Republican leaders who designed the "Contract With America"—a 10-point program that included a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget—sought to -capitalize on a broad disgust with Washington, reflected at the time in the 19 percent vote that third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot won in 1992. Then, as now, the Republicans were trying to exploit a backlash against big government. It was Hillarycare in '94; now it's Obamacare.