Republicans Have Joined the Party--and They’re Loving It

WASHINGTON —  Somebody else does the cooking; Arianna Huffington selects the menu: rack of lamb and ravioli with asparagus tips and wild mushrooms.

She puts on a black velvet skirt, white silk top and black cashmere sweater by Valentino--Nancy Reagan’s designer of choice. The guests, an assemblage of conservative big shots--including media watchers, think tankers and pundits--gather before a roaring fire for cocktails, then move on to dinner.

And before the lemon meringue tartlets with blackberry sauce are even served, voila, yet another Democratic turncoat--this one, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama--is warmly welcomed into the conservative Republican fold.

Whether it be a roaring fire and California wines at the Huffington digs above Georgetown, barbecued sandwiches on paper plates at the Free Congress Foundation near Union Station, Chinese takeout and heavy metal at tax reformist Grover Norquist’s townhome off Capitol Hill or honey-roast hams and harp music at the Watergate apartment of brewery baroness Holly Coors, the Washington social scene is being co-opted by conservative Republicans.

“This,” observes an agitated Democrat and longtime denizen of Washington society, “is a different breed of cat.”

These felines couldn’t agree more. Heady with power and emboldened by the prospect of real permanency in Washington, the Republican right is determined not only to recast government, but make over the party circuit as well.

“The media has this bias that conservatives just live a monastic life,” says Jay Lefkowitz, a 33-year-old Washington lawyer who co-founded the much-heralded Dark Ages jamboree for conservatives in Miami over New Year’s.

“Just because we may tend to read more books than watch sitcoms on TV--and I’m not even sure about that--doesn’t mean that we don’t know how to have fun.”

Like est devotees suddenly agog about self-awareness, conservatives have discovered the art of fun--that it’s possible to slash social spending one night and party hardy the next. When the 100 days of House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America” ended, the city was awash in self-congratulatory bashes.

“There’s definitely a different spirit in the air,” says Washington lawyer Laura Ingraham, who with Lefkowitz co-founded the Dark Ages retreat.

At 31, the former editor of the Dartmouth Review and Reagan speech writer is among a burgeoning crowd of young conservatives in Washington eager to displace.

“People are optimistic about real change in the way the government works and, we hope, the way it is curtailed and cut back. And with this sort of excitement comes a different outgrowth in the social life in Washington.”

In years past, the right was little more than social fringe complaining about “champagne socialists” as the capital’s left-leaning elite mixed at a Sally Quinn / Ben Bradlee dinner party or Pamela Harriman soiree.

Conservatives remember how their gatherings back then, with perhaps a William F. Buckley as party centerpiece, were often stuffy, awkward affairs.

“There was a stiffness, sort of an unwillingness to mingle. It was like doing a dance for freshman girls,” says ultra-right guru Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation. “With this crowd that there is now--young, brash, very positive, easy to get along with, lots of fun, lots of jokes--it’s an entirely different scene.”

And even mavens left over from the Reagan era--when there was a splash of social dominance by well-heeled Californians amid a regimen of black-tie White House affairs during the ‘80s--say they’ve become reinvigorated by today’s conservative social agenda.

“I find it very stimulating,” says Coors, who was appointed a goodwill ambassador by Reagan but has since become a popular conservative hostess from her river-view perch at the Watergate.

“We’re all eager to meet and to champion these young freshmen who have come into town and are very coveted to have for an evening.”

Many see Huffington as the darling of the conservative social scene.

“She is the Pamela Harriman of the Republican right,” declares Washington Times columnist Suzanne Fields. “She’s classy.”

The wife of former California Rep. Michael Huffington and a close confidante of House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Arianna Huffington has a social and political dance card that is full to overflowing. In addition to maintaining households in California and Washington, Huffington runs the Center for Effective Compassion think tank, has launched a syndicated newspaper column and is collaborating with satirist Harry Shearer on a television spoof to be called “Eat the Press.”

Her dinner parties are built around issues, with an occasional diversion to benefit a conservative cause or writer, or celebrate (and start networking for) some senator who switches parties.

And Huffington takes pleasure in establishing as party regulars “people actually working in the trenches”--an Anacostia woman who runs an after-school program for children or a couple who minister to drug addicts--all without federal subsidy. It underscores her theme of promoting a conservative view of compassion, “challenging, personal and spiritual,” and most importantly, free of tax dollars.

“In the more intimate seating of a dinner, people can explore the ideas more fully and, most important, can see how to put them into effect to change behavior,” Huffington says.

It’s no wonder vanguards of the right take such pride in her salons.

“Her role is kind of the role of European hostess,” says American Spectator Editor and columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., who hosts his own social conclave of conservative journalists monthly over French cuisine at La Brasserie.

“She is by birth Greek and by education English and so her sense of a party is a bringing together of bright people from different walks of life and she is assiduous about [it].”

Brahmins of the left, who have seen conservatives come and go through the Washington ages, are little impressed. Real staying power, they maintain, was always on the left--and only time, circumstance or cultural devolution of the art of hostessing could diminish it. Liberals invented a good time, they will tell you.

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Conservative Richard Viguerie, a political direct-mail pioneer and Washington resident for 32 years, grudgingly concedes: “I think it’s a strength of the left that they do have that level of entertaining and socializing.”

With star-crossed origins from the ‘60s in the John F. Kennedy crowd and the storied elegance of Georgetown evenings, theirs was an era when hostesses didn’t just invite friends, they assembled a cast; where seating was an exacting art and men and women separated after the meal; where leisure was a religion, nothing was quoted and toasting was spontaneous.

“I think the most interesting things were always said over cognac in the library,” says Jayne Ikard, a Democrat and former hostess.

Practitioners have for years mourned the passing of the era. Sally Quinn, married to now-retired Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, declared in a Post magazine feature eight years ago that the “Washington Hostess is dead . . . the woman today who calls herself a hostess is merely a social climber.”

“Ostentatious” is now a four-letter word. Pheasant is no longer served under glass, but in a pie; whole lobsters are chopped into stew.

Pamela Harriman, wife of the late advisor to Democratic presidents Averall Harriman, is now 76 and ambassador to France and has left behind her ensign as dowager of the left. Others have retired or passed from the scene. When fabled hostess Evangeline Bruce died last month at age 77, the Post eulogized her as the “plenipotentiary of protocol, always knowing who sat where, how officials were to be addressed and who went first through the door.”

Vestiges remain. “There are only two things in this town you never turn down,” says Washingtonian Magazine Editor at Large Chuck Conconi, borrowing an oft-used quote, “dinner at the White House and anything at Katharine Graham’s.” Now chairman of the Washington Post Co.’s executive committee, having left publishing to her son, Graham still commands social homage.

But much of the society playing field, like the halls of Congress, are being overrun by what Brad Keanu of the conservative National Empowerment Television network calls the “compromise-is-a-dirty-word crowd.”

“We did not self-consciously come here to join their [liberal] Washington,” says Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform. “We came here to displace their Washington. . . . It’s the creation of a counterculture.”

Members of the rebellious Republican freshmen class might get pummeled in the national press for refusing to bargain on the budget, but then walk into a standing ovation at one of Weyrich’s exclusive Wednesday receptions.

“I think liberals always did have more fun than conservatives,” Fields says. “I think that has changed now that they have the confidence of power.”

Still, it’s all so new.

“We are not used to being leaders and on the inside, movers and shakers, relaxed with all this power and influence,” Viguerie says. “It’s only recently that we’re beginning to kind of have fun.”