ASHINGTON - In the film ''Groundhog Day,'' Bill Murray portrays a TV weatherman who wakes up every morning to the same day, powerless to change the course of events.
Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and although Washington woke up after the New Hampshire primary to a new political landscape, few dared to acknowledge that anything here had changed.
GOP lawmakers expressed surprise at the size of Arizona Senator John McCain's win over Texas Governor George W. Bush in Tuesday's Republican primary. But most attributed it to New Hampshire's eccentricities or to McCain's endurance, not to the senator's promise to shake up Washington and shake out its special interests.
''Life goes on here,'' said Representative Thomas M. Davis, a Virginia Republican who heads the House committee that is raising millions for GOP candidates. Davis dismissed as ''press spin'' the notion that McCain's message of removing big money from politics had resonated too much with Granite State voters.
Minutes later, Davis joined Jim Nicholson, chairman of the Republican National Committee, at a news conference where Nicholson announced the party's plan for a ''multimillion-dollar initiative'' to help elect GOP state legislators and influence congressional redistricting in 2001.
Nicholson denied that the Republican Party establishment, which overwhelmingly has endorsed Bush and has embraced him as the best hope for winning the White House in November, was shaken by the results in New Hamsphire, where McCain received 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent.
''I haven't seen anybody shaking, and I am not shaking,'' said Nicholson, who attributed McCain's success to the fact that primary voters ''don't like or trust Al Gore'' and are yearning for a candidate with integrity.
In their Capitol cloakrooms, however, members of both parties privately expressed anxiety at Bush's drubbing, and how thin Vice President Gore's win was over former senator Bill Bradley in the Democratic primary. Bradley, like McCain, ran as an outsider, promising to practice a ''new politics'' and not abuse the campaign-finance laws, which he accuses Gore of doing.
''A lot of holy cows got wounded last night, and these guys are worried,'' said Tom Korologos, who came to the Senate as an aide in 1962, worked in the Nixon White House, and is now one of the cardinals of Washington corporate lobbying. Yesterday, it was still business as usual: Korologos waited outside the chamber for a word with senators who were voting on a bill, backed by the banking and credit-card industry, to overhaul bankruptcy laws.
At his victory rally in Nashua, N.H., Tuesday night, McCain pledged to turn his New Hampshire campaign into ''a national crusade'' to change the way Washington works.
''I ask you to help me break the Washington iron triangle of big money, lobbyists, and legislation that for too long has put special interests above the national interest,'' McCain said. ''We have sent a powerful message to Washington that change is coming.''
Korologos responded to that statement with a laugh. ''This place never changes. Being a special interest myself, I can tell you that the First Amendment to the Constitution says we have a right to petition the government, and somebody has to repeal that before I start worrying,'' he said.
But Fred Wertheimer, who has been working on overhauling the campaign-finance laws almost as long as Korologos has been lobbying, said that both McCain and Bradley sent a powerful message to political leaders in Washington and punctured their illusion that Americans don't care about the access money buys in Washington.
''The Washington establishment is in a state of shock today. McCain delivered the political equivalent of announcing that the king has no clothes on,'' said Wertheimer, who is president of Democracy 21, a public-policy group. ''Would I expect them to be saying, `We've changed our minds about the way we do business?' No. But they cannot ignore this message.''
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat who endorsed Bradley, agrees that a fundamental change is afoot, although it may be hard for the current Congress to appreciate and adapt to it.
''The message I got is that the standard positions of the establishment parties on both sides are not working anymore,'' said Moynihan, who is retiring at the end of the year. ''We have the making of a new generation of politicians. This place, for good or ill, must recognize it is no longer very representative of the American people.''
That's pretty strong medicine to swallow. So yesterday there were denials, excuses, and just plain puzzlement in the capital over what New Hampshire's voters meant to say.
''I don't think the earth moved in Washington, but I did hear people say, many times, `What happened?''' said Governor Paul Cellucci, who was here to testify before the Senate Budget Committee on his opposition to taxing commerce on the Internet.
''Give Senator McCain credit; his strategy worked and his message helped him in New Hampshire,'' said Cellucci, who has endorsed Bush. ''But the problem with his message is that McCain isn't an outsider; he's an insider. And the Democrats are going to pick apart every issue he has voted on in the Senate and every contribution he has received as the chairman of the Commerce Committee.''
Gore can't campaign as anything but the consummate insider. There he was yesterday, in the Senate chamber, summoned from his campaign by Democratic Senate leaders and the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights League, a special-interest group, to break what they thought might be a tie vote on an abortion-related amendment to the bankruptcy bill. The amendment passed without his help, but Gore enjoyed a few minutes of backslapping and encouragment from Senate supporters.
''Senator Bradley ran a strong campaign in New Hampshire, and the campaign-finance issue had some resonance,'' said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who endorsed Gore. ''But it's all personal politics in New Hampshire, and it's not that way around the country. I believe Gore will be our party's nominee.''
Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican who supports McCain, wasn't prepared to say, either, that McCain's promise to turn off the tap on political money was a winning issue.
''I don't think voters go around saying, `Gee, if we just had campaign-finance reform, the world would be a better place,''' Hagel said. ''What resonates is McCain's story - that he's an outsider, experienced, trustworthy, the antithesis of Clinton, and can define himself better than Bush.''
Maybe McCain was even understood better in New Hampshire, mused Senator Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican.
''They speak a strange dialect up there - you can't understand them,'' Gramm said, straightfaced and with a deep Southern twang. ''I don't think they knew whether Bush was saying `Texas' or `taxes,' and that created problems.''
Things should improve for the Texas governor, Gramm said, now that the campaign is moving to South Carolina.
''People from Texas have historically done poorly in contested New Hampshire primaries,'' said Gramm, who made a brief run for the presidency in 1996. ''It's a small state that tends to want to force candidates to grovel. Texas politicians have plenty of skills, but groveling is not one of them.''
