GOP feels the pain of its own tight grasp

WASHINGTON -- The House Republican leadership, in recent years, has had many heads -- the speaker, majority leader, whip, and top committee chairmen -- but one face: hard-nosed, square-jawed, and unsmiling.

When House leaders pushed through their enforcement-only immigration plan in December -- calling for 698 miles of border fences, new criminal penalties for illegal immigrants, and bans on most services for illegal-immigrant families -- they were showing a face that the public knows only too well.

In recent weeks, there has been much hand-wringing in GOP circles over how the party could lose its 29-seat margin in the House this year because of the unpopularity of one-party government. Party strategists have pointed to President Bush's declining approval ratings on Iraq and the inability of Senate Republicans to coalesce behind important legislation.

But the immigration debate has cast new light on the role of the House itself in the GOP's tripartite government, and has produced increased evidence that the House leadership -- more than either Bush or the Senate -- is out of synch with the political mainstream.

Majorities of Americans in a recent Time magazine poll favored a crackdown on illegal immigrants, but softer than the House bill. Overwhelming majorities also favored some form of guest-worker program and an eventual path to citizenship. These provisions were quashed by House leaders, even though they were cosponsored by their own GOP members.

With the likelihood of a battle between Senate moderates and House hard-liners over immigration, many political observers now say that this year's elections will turn as much on the public's view of the House leadership as its feelings about Bush or the Senate.

Unlike the 100-member Senate, where each senator can play a role in writing legislation, the 435-member House, in recent years, has enacted rules giving unprecedented authority to leaders. As a result, there is little debate on bills, and rank-and-file members rarely play significant roles in drafting legislation. Even bills with enough bipartisan support to pass the House can easily be blocked by leaders.

Back in 1994, when Republicans swept to power behind the ''Contract with America," the face of the House GOP leadership was the pudgy mug of Newt Gingrich, who had masterminded the revolution.

Gingrich had promised to loosen the grip of powerful leaders.

But his imposition of term limits for committee chairmen ended up weakening the seniority system and concentrating more power in the central leadership.

Initially, the public was happy to see the often unruly House uniting behind a single agenda. But as Speaker Gingrich ticked off the Contract with America items, like a supermarket shopper crossing items off his list, his own ego began to expand. He put on presidential airs in delivering a televised address to the nation. He griped when he was forced to exit the back door of Air Force One when returning from the funeral of the murdered Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in November 1995.

After the GOP lost seats in 1998, Republicans ousted Gingrich from power: The lesson taken by the new leaders under Speaker J. Dennis Hastert was to maintain Gingrich's tight control -- and strengthen it with further rule changes -- while avoiding egotistical excesses. The power that was once wielded unilaterally by Gingrich was shared by the low-key Hastert and a team led by the majority leader, Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican.

Last year, DeLay came under ethical assault for his dealmaking, including a Texas indictment on a campaign-finance charge and an investigation into favors he received from Jack Abramoff, the disgraced lobbyist. He was replaced as majority leader by Ohio's John A. Boehner.

But whether through the offices of Gingrich, Hastert, DeLay, or Boehner, the House leadership has been the engine of the GOP machine in Washington. More than the president or the Senate, the House has set the domestic agenda with a series of giant bills on transportation, energy, and Medicare, and an appropriations system that buys off lawmakers of both parties with thousands of secret ''earmarks."

Periodically, the House leadership has delved into the social realm, as with last Easter's dramatic action on the Terri Schiavo case.

But even when its motivation was compassionate, as in the Schiavo case, or its impetus was nonideological, as in the Medicare expansion, the leadership team's dictatorial tactics have dominated the action. And when the action has been both ideological and harsh, as with the immigration crackdown pushed by the bullish Judiciary Committee chairman, F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, the face that emerged has been downright unfriendly.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.