WASHINGTON — Rep. Newt Gingrich, squelching dissension in Republican ranks over his admitted ethics lapses, narrowly won reelection to a second term as House speaker Tuesday and immediately offered an olive branch to his political adversaries.
Gingrich, the Georgia firebrand who led the Republican takeover of Congress two years ago only to become entangled in a messy ethics investigation, used his acceptance speech to offer an apology to House colleagues.
"To the degree I was too brash, too self-confident or too pushy, I apologize," Gingrich said after he was deserted by nine Republicans in an extraordinary display of Republican anxiety about voting for him before the House Ethics Committee delivers its verdict in his case. "This has been a very difficult time. Some of the difficulty I brought on myself."
The House elected Gingrich over Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) by a 216-205 margin. But under House rules requiring a majority of those voting to elect a speaker, the outcome actually was much closer.
The vote ended a weeks-long GOP leadership drive to keep the party united behind Gingrich, who lobbied wavering members until minutes before the vote.
But it was hardly the end of his troubles or of debate about his future as a leader of the Republican Party. The Ethics Committee is scheduled to begin deliberations today on the degree of punishment to impose on Gingrich, who has admitted violating House rules in connection with a college course he taught that improperly used financing from a tax-exempt foundation.
And even if the ethics investigation ends with a relatively mild reprimand, as widely expected, some political observers--and even some Republicans--believe that Gingrich's political power and institutional authority have been irreversibly undermined.
"He was on thin ice before. Now there is no ice," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. "He's walking on water based on his 1994 performance."
The degree to which the ethics flap will continue to shadow Gingrich and the House became clear Tuesday when, immediately after his election, the chamber erupted into a bitter debate about whether to extend the Jan. 21 deadline for completing the investigation of the speaker.
GOP Leaders Pressure Panel on Deadline
The ethics subcommittee conducting the investigation has said that it cannot complete it by then but House GOP leaders Tuesday pushed through a measure that forces the committee to bring the case to a House vote by Jan. 21.
