GOP victory prompts command performance - Republican victory in the 1994 elections - includes related article on effect of the election on the Democratic Party

Republicans will control both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years, but they would do well to heed President Clinton's setback as a cautionary tale.

Less than 48 hours after the extraordinary Nov. 8 midterm elections, veteran GOP consultant Ed Rollins told a Washington audience that he had never expected to see such an electoral upheaval in his lifetime. "Democrats in the White House better not underestimate what happened," he said, adding, "Republicans had better perform."

With the day-after defection of Alabama's Richard Shelby, the GOP will enjoy a 53-47 edge in the Senate next year. The change in the House will be even more overwhelming, where at least 54 seats will turn Republican. But the election has upended Washington's political culture from top to bottom. Republicans now will have a majority of congressional staff positions - and they will demonstrate their fiscal bonafides by eliminating some patronage positions currently held by Democrats. New congressional leaders are promising institutional reforms aimed at making Congress more responsive to voters.

And what the voters have demanded, say Republicans, is a return to Reagan-era themes such as cutting taxes on capital gains, passing a balanced budget amendment and slowing down defense cuts. Clinton appointees to the bench and the State Department will be subject to more critical scrutiny, and some of the president's achievements - such as last summers crime bill - may be overturned.

It's uncertain how the Democrats will respond. A number of moderate Democrats are leaving Congress, including Tennessee's Jim Cooper, who sponsored health care legislation to compete with the Clinton plan, and Oklahoma's Dave McCurdy, who has been influential on defense and intelligence issues. Remaining House Democrats are fewer in number and more liberal in outlook. The Congressional Black Caucus, "as far as it maintains itself as a very solid, liberal-to-progressive bloc, which is not really be found anywhere else in Congress or in the Democratic Party," might wield new power, notes Howard University political scientist Alvin Thornton.

On the other hand, some minority members "will be forced back into the roles they played when they first came into the Congress," says Thornton "They had no institutional authority and no reasonable expectation of get ting any in the near future, so they played a kind of educational role as opposed to a legislative role." This, he points out, is what Newt Gingrich, the next House speaker, did during the last several years. "He wasn't interested in getting anything passed - he was `educating,' if you will."

As GOP consultant Glenn Bolger explains, this leaves Clinton "between a rock and a hard place." When Republicans cut spending and propose tough crime legislation, the president will have to wield his veto pen,"even if it`s going to be politically unpopular for him to veto. He's going to be pulled by the left to veto it and pushed by middle America to go ahead and support it."

But if the public grows dissatisfied with the Republican agenda - or if they sense the GOP isn,t serious about reform - their patience will be short. At both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, politicians are looking over their shoulders@ at a critical electorate.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are thinking of 1996. Both Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, the new majority leader, and Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, are laying the groundwork for presidential bids, and both will be jockeying for position in the 104th Congress. Newt Gingrich undoubtedly will work to place conservative allies in key committee positions in the House - even if it means sometimes edging out more senior Republicans.

At any rate, when the next Congress gress convenes in January, House Republicans have a ready-made agenda - the controversial "Contract With America" that GOP candidates promised would be enacted in the first 100 days. Democrats had derided the contract as a campaign miscalculation and a "contract on America." In light of Election Day, the GOP ploy appears to have become a mandate.

Frank Luntz, a GOP pollster and major force behind the contract who predicted a Republican sweep four weeks before the polls opened, warned the day after that "what happened yesterday will be completely irrelevant if Republicans don't follow through on the contract." The House's first-day agenda certainly will include populist-leaning reform legislation that would hold Congress to the same federal laws that apply to the rest of the country, cut congressional staffing levels deeply and reduce the number of committees and subcommittees. "`Congress - the way it ought to be' - that could have been our slogan, and now its something we've got to deliver," says Bolger.

Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, points out that congressional reform drew bipartisan support during the last session but was stymied by Democratic leadership. "The Joint Committee on Reorganization had what we thought were a lot of good ideas, but they really couldn't even get those to the floor," he says. "You did have bipartisan support, but you had a leadership that said no." If Gingrich and Dole are serious, reforms should sail through this time.