Newt Gingrich was speaker in 1995 and is still a leader in the GOP today. | AP Photos Old Guard still drive GOP agenda

BALTIMORE—Plenty of comparisons have been drawn between the Republican romp of 1995 and the GOP shellacking of 2010.

But how little the GOP has actually changed is on stark display here, where the House Republican “Congress of Tomorrow” retreat seems more like a curtain call from yesteryear.


Here’s the scene: Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, is holding forth with big ideas and “30,000-foot” worldview on health care and politics.

Frank Luntz, the old-school Republican word guru, was called in to coach the neophyte politicians on how to message their impending vote to increase the amount of money the nation can borrow.

Former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) is talking about free markets and spending.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former K Street ally of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Republican National Committee chairman from 1993 to 1997, spoke about his work as a state executive, while also touching on the similarities to when he led the party.

“It is reminiscent of 1995 when Sen. [Bob] Dole and Speaker Gingrich talked about a new partnership among House, Senate and governors,” Barbour said. “So we look forward to working with them, we were glad to be asked.”

And this all comes at a retreat that is a signature Washington event: As in the past, it’s paid for by a nonprofit organization funded, and run, by corporate lobbyists, even though many of the attendees campaigned against special interests and the insider ways of the capital city.

For a new GOP majority that promised to change the ways of Washington — indeed ran against its own party’s establishment in some cases — the retread status of this retreat is striking.

The Contract with America is now the Pledge to America, and Boehner’s chief of staff Barry Jackson — the man pulling the strings quietly behind the scenes here and simultaneously at the RNC meeting in Oxon Hill, Md., — still has a firm grip on every corner of the party’s infrastructure.

Republicans aren’t alone; in fact the blast from the past is also evident on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The day the House GOP gathered here at the harbor-side, sky-scraping Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, the White House announced that Bruce Reed, a Clinton-era policy adviser, would rejoin the executive branch as Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff. Last week, former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley became Obama’s chief of staff.

There’s a reason why both parties are turning to the old political hands even as national life has changed and social media and blogs have made public dealings more instantaneous: The GOP House majority — and the Democrats who control the Senate and the White House — are wrestling with lots of tough issues, not least raising the amount of money the country can borrow and selling it to an electorate that thought it voted for an end to lavish spending and increased debt. Luntz has been the force behind branding some tough issues, and Gingrich was a part of a GOP leadership team that balanced the budget and went toe-to-toe with a Democratic president, even though he failed in significant ways and his tenure as speaker ended in disgrace.

“Instead of just going back and saying we want small government, talk about effective and efficient government, and I think that’s more to the point,” said Rep. Allen West, a tea party-backed Republican from Florida and political neophyte, echoing Luntz’s advice on how to talk about shrinking government.

Gingrich, to many of the attendees here, represents a Republican success — House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Gingrich’s speech gave him insights on “looking at what the world can be.”

“When he talks about how they worked to get a balanced budget, a balanced budget amendment, even though they fell short, they still went on to pretend like it did pass and they worked to continue to drive down to the point where they were operated with their fiscal affairs in order,” Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.) said of Gingrich.

Gramm, along with Gingrich, spoke about spending and a “return to free markets.”

“You are not going to do that simply by oversight, you’re not going to do that simply by getting in to find out what was done wrong in the past but in typical Gingrich speak, we’re going to do that by profound changes to the operation of the federal government,” said Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), echoing the Georgian’s message. “We are not going to need to reform, we need to replace. We don’t need to simply repeal, we need to figure out solutions to some fundamental problems.”

As he has for more than a decade, Gingrich also talked about the overregulating Food and Drug Administration, and how it’s stunted innovation within medicine. McCarthy said Gingrich and Gramm “both kind of always expand your mind with ideas.”

Lawmakers say it was classic Gingrich and his performance got nothing but praise. Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.) said the Georgian is “is always a very, very engaging speaker and he had a lot of ideas about how we might proceed.” Rooney said he told the room how Republicans they can “get even more of a majority in the next election in both the House obviously and the Senate and win the White House” — something Gingrich, himself, never did.

In fact, Gingrich might not be the best Republican role model. He suffered losses in two consecutive congressional elections, and was caught up in an ethics scandal, leading to his forced abdication from the speakership. But House Republicans still seem to revere his advice. Rooney said Gingrich shows the GOP “lessons learned in the past and how we can do it now.

“Obviously, he didn’t have much time to go into the details of what mistakes were made, but I think it’s just to offer, again, kind of like the hope of it can be done,” Rooney said.

Luntz, on the other hand, seems to be serving a more pointed purpose, coaching on the toughest issue Congress might deal with: the debt ceiling. Republicans want to spin the issue forward — they’ll talk about living up to debts of the past, while making changes for the future.

“The two critical things he said: get out there in front of your people, in front of your constituents and connect with them with some of the key words that they’re looking to hear,” West said. “The old status quo words, the old leadership by fear mongering, that type of stuff is not going to work.”

But their attendance here also helped underscore the sharp differences between the mid 1990s and 2011. In 1995, America wasn’t in two wars, didn’t have nearly as high a deficit or unemployment rate.

“America was a different America then,” McCarthy said. “This election was bigger than 1994. But also from the perspective the challenges we face today are larger. In 1995 when they had the budget battle no one questioned who the world leader was. No one questioned where you kept your currency, you kept it in dollars.”

No one expects that these old hands will disappear — Gingrich spoke last year, and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey did as well. But even this anti-Washington class shrugs at the funding of the retreat.

“We need to be here meeting, now could there have been a different way of doing this? Could we have just stayed right there on site around Capitol Hill and done this? Sure,” West said. “So maybe as we move forward that’s one of the alternatives we look at later on.”