READY, AIM, MISFIRE

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Congressman Tom Delay, the pest-control expert from Laredo, Texas, knows all about the black art of extermination. So how did the majority whip so thoroughly botch the job he undertook two weeks ago, when he tried to eradicate a king-size Newt?

In scheming to be rid of House Speaker Gingrich, DeLay and his co-conspirators showed all the talent for intrigue of Peter Sellers in his Pink Panther days. Depending on who's doing the telling, the schemers included one, two or all three of the other House leaders ranked directly below the Speaker--majority leader Dick Armey, G.O.P. conference chairman John Boehner and leadership chairman Bill Paxon--not to mention 20 or more insurgents from the rank and file. Cooked up in secrecy, the coup collapsed before it could begin. The result was a week of backstabbing that left Gingrich weaker yet more entrenched. It could lead, as early as this week, to a complete reshuffling of his leadership team--just as negotiations with the White House on the year's most important legislation enter their critical stage. Says Florida Republican Mark Foley: "It's like a circular firing squad."

The squad has already claimed its first victim: Paxon, the most trusted of Gingrich's lieutenants. When Gingrich was launching his bid to take control of the House in 1994, he chose the New York Congressman to run the committee that holds the G.O.P.'s campaign purse strings. When ethics allegations threatened to cost the Speaker his post, he put Paxon in charge of his re-election. And whenever Newt needed someone to defend him on television, Paxon was willing to aim his happy, preppy face toward the camera. Last Tuesday, as Gingrich touted G.O.P. tax cuts under a sweltering sun, Paxon even gazed at him with the kind of adoring smile Nancy Reagan used to bestow on her husband.

Yet less than 36 hours later, Paxon was in Gingrich's office, volunteering to relinquish the leadership post that Gingrich had invented for him. "Newt," Paxon quavered, "if you want me to resign, I will." The next morning, Gingrich accepted the offer. And so it was that a G.O.P. rising star learned a bitter lesson: if you set out to kill the king, you had better make sure he's dead.

It helps to have an endgame strategy--something DeLay, Paxon and the others never thoroughly formulated. Instead, they let events overtake them. Rumors had been circulating for weeks that the so-called rebels--a fluctuating group of House Republicans, mostly from the revolutionary class of '94--were devising a way to force Gingrich out. But to do it, they needed cooperation from the top echelon.

On July 9 Armey, DeLay, Boehner and Paxon gathered for the first of several secret meetings to discuss the brewing rebellion. The next night, DeLay met with 20 rebels in the offices of Oklahoma's Steve Largent. At first, DeLay was coy. Then he warned that if the rebels were going to act, they had better do so quickly, because their plot was about to leak. "Is everybody prepared to go ahead with this?" he asked. At that point, Indiana's Mark Souder turned the question around. "Are you with us?" According to several participants, DeLay was clearly speaking for the others when he answered yes. The leaders seemed on board.