In 1993 and 1994, Newt Gingrich changed the way that the Republican party does business. Before Gingrich, there were policy differences, but strong working relationships allowed major legislation to move when Reagan and Bush Sr. worked with Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill.
Faced with the election of Bill Clinton, Gingrich offerred a new approach designed to change the long-term minority status of Republicans in the House and Senate: fight President Clinton on everything.
The battle began on day one. Republicans attacked on Clinton on simple equality for gays and lesbians in the military. They defeated Clinton’s economic stimulus bill. When Clinton passed his budget, his victory came with zero Republican votes in the House. And then came the healthcare, which ended in disaster for the Clinton Administration.
By the fall of 1994, the Republicans had succeeded in making the Clinton Administration appear ineffective. Gingrich launched his Contract with America. The Republicans took the House and Senate.
Today’s Republicans are working straight out of the 1993-1994 Gingrich playbook. So, what do we do?
This is where the Clinton White House fell short. If Obama continues to hold town hall meetings like he did this week in Indiana and Florida he may be well on his way to avoiding Clinton’s mistakes. There are differences, however, which I believe the GOP ignores at their peril. The most obvious being the percentage difference in popular vote. You can’t argue that Obama got a comfortable majority of the popular vote whereas Clinton only got 43%, making it much easier to claim he somehow was not legitimate, had no mandate, etc. I’m pretty sure you misstate the history slightly. I thought it was the stimulus that passed without a single GOP vote. It was the budget battle after the GOP won Congress which was the beginning of Clinton’s comeback.
We’ve just come off 8 years in 6 of which the Republicans had control of all three branches and failed miserably. The Gingrich playbook looks petty and tired these days. Hopefully Obama can keep it that way.
Recently Rep Louise Slaughter wrote the following diary on Daily Kos which I quote at length because of its useful material:
The response on Daily Kos was telling. It was: You are preaching to the choir why aren’t you saying this on television? Democrats really should be winning the message war on this. Instead, to quote Atrios:
Clinton scorched Bob Dole (and Ross Perot) in the Presidential election, at least partly because Gingrich had put such a bad face on the Republicans.
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p>So the question is: Will 2010 be like 1994, or like 1996?
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p>I’m guessing the latter, since we just had 8 years of Gingrich-esque leadership.
He won, but as i recall, he didn’t get over 50%.
But he still beat Dole by almost 10 points in the popular vote.
OK, this has to be cleared up once and for all. I keep hearing people bring up the 1994 analogy to the current situation (or what they think is the possible situation in 2010), and it is just wrong.
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p>The Republicans did not win big in 1994 because they fought Clinton on everything. They did not win big because of Newt Gingrich’s visionary leadership. They did not win big because of the Contract With America, the contents of which most voters didn’t know much about. They won big because the Democrats had a very large number of open seats in a mid-term election, and because this election completed the long-term conversion of the South from solid Democratic to pretty solidly Republican (on the federal level, at least).
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p>Would the Republicans have had a pretty decent year even without these factors? Possibly, considering that it was a mid-term election, and the Democrats had the Presidency. And I likewise have little doubt that the Republicans will make gains in the House in 2010, no matter what happens. But the structural factors are the largest factors when predicting elections — which is why the Democrats are likely to gain seats in the Senate in 2010 no matter what (because the GOP is defending more tough open seats), even if they shed some seats in the House.
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p>Looking to 1994 in order to predict 2010 is pure folly, because it is a completely different situation. If this flawed analogy is what the Republicans are hanging their hat on, great.
A different take. Thank you.
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p>Could add: There were also a few too many Democratic corruption scandals that year.
meshes with the opposition to the assault weapons ban, which was seen by many in the South as the beginning of the Federal Government trying to register every firearm.
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p>But Hoyapaul, there is a mathematics of voting power, and bloc voters have more power. Because the Republicans held together and stopped massive infrastructure repair and national health coverage, Republicans denied Democrats the chance to deliver job & health security to Americans. The long postwar dominance of Democrats in the South was partly due to Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA, Social Security, and TVA which brought new economic security to poor whites, and Republicans knew that. This is why people like Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan played for empathy on states’ rights (racism) to win votes down there–in the same years majorities were electing non-racist Democrats like Dale Bumpers or Al Gore (Junior and Senior) to the Senate to continue that FDR tradition of government investing in projects to alleviate prosperity.
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p>The 1994 conversion needed the Republicans to break that connection between voters and Democrats in Congress. In 1994, Bill Kristol told Republicans:
The way they did it was to stop Democrats from delivering to the voters.
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p>Obviously, today’s GOP is weaker than 1993’s. But if they are to come back–and they want to come back–blocking Obama is a necessary step. That’s why Judd Gregg made his announcement not on Friday morning but at a press conference the same time as Obama was holding a televised town hall meeting. He’s a Republican, and as part of that group, he is trying to maximize the damage he can do to the President.
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p>Avi’s analogy about 1994 is very relevant.
“FDR tradition of government investing in projects to alleviate poverty and assure prosperity for more people.” –that’s how it was intended to be written.
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p>That typo is going to be like the Bat Signal to gary.
Your points are solid, though ultimately I disagree. The South, in my view, was still Democratic during and for the two decades following the New Deal not because of the TVA and so forth, but because of their historical attachment to the Democratic Party. Note that southern Democrats opposed much of, and successfully blocked some of, FDR’s economic program. Part of this was for racial reasons (i.e. “welfare” going to blacks) and part of it was because of a ideological commitment against federal intervention in the economy. Also, the old Southern Democratic Representatives/Senators still had a lock-hold on the committee chairs (because of seniority), and they weren’t about to give that up by switching to the Republican Party, which in any case was still largely affiliated with the North.
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p>As far as blocking Obama, sure, conservatives have to stand for something. But it is not a good strategy for the Republican Party, which needs a combination of long-term broadening of its base and a good structural opportunity to get back in power. The trends of Latino, younger, and upper-middle class whites away from the Republican Party spells long-term disaster for the GOP unless they change (which they will, eventually).
The south had to be dragged kicking and screaming into rural electrification.
While the Southern economy has been like a banana republic, Mr. Lynne, and there are cases of local & state officials fighting federal help simply to protect their own turf, the majority of voters there are very much aware that their economy was behind the North’s for two centuries and they want to live better. This desire for water projects, electrification, and progress was what Democrats used to win majorities there.
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p>The trends of Latino, younger, and upper-middle class whites away from the Republican Party spells long-term disaster for the GOP unless they change (which they will, eventually).
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p>True, but there are those politicians who have the skills to win despite such trends, and they can seemingly come out of nowhere to do it. For instance, Bill Clinton in 1989 was considered someone who talked too long at the 1988 Convention, the butt of Johnny Carson’s jokes. He managed to win twice and hold back the conservative movement in the 1990s. Republicans will be hungry for victory and may actually pick someone who is a little more moderate than McCain or Bush because any win for them in 2012 would be better than losing with a pure conservative. They’ll work for short-term victory and worry about long term later. While I agree with you, Hoyapaul, that the trend favors Obama, I fear that complacency toward Republican obstruction could lead to defeat.
How corrupt the Congressional Democrats had become by 1994 — Rostenkowski and company were almost as bad as the DeLay Cabal. That is another advantage that the Republicans won’t enjoy in 2010.
As individuals, you’d probably have a point, but the genius of the DeLay Cabal wasn’t the system, it was the machine. DeLay et al created a systematic means by which they could push unpopular ideas through congress by means of a with-us or against-us heart & soul deal-you-can’t-refuse with K street, a hopelessly cynical top-down assignment of GOP floor votes, and a complete willingness to completely rewrite legislation behind closed doors. No one Democrat ever was able to accomplish so much. Hell no group of Democrats has.
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p>Further reading:
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p>OFF CENTER: The Republican Revolution & the Erosion of American Democracy
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p>From an Amazon review:
Hoyapaul,
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p>I agree completely. Structure defined 1994, and will define 2010 again. But the question I set out to ask in my post was not “What will happen in 2010 and why?” but rather “Why are the Republicans attacking everything Obama does?”
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p>The point is, the Republicans in DC believe that following the Gingrich playbook will return them to power. That’s why they refuse to work with Obama on anything — and why Obama, Pelosi, and Reid should not expect anything but stiff resistance from them.
I may have misread the purpose of your post.
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p>You are correct that the Republicans seem to be relying on the 1994 analogy, because I have heard this analogy made incessantly in the media. “Are the Democrats set for a fall?” “The Republicans opposed Clinton and 1994 happened, so will Republicans’ opposing Obama mean big gains in 2010?” Etc.
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p>The main problem is that if the Democrats buy into this, then it breeds over-caution. I was no stranger to preaching moderation and caution over the past few years, but things are different now. Democrats now have the votes, and they need to use them.
There’s an amazing amount of FUD being spread around. Everything from complete fabrications regarding FDR’s record to claims that the Clinton administration did nothing about the Cole and first WTC bombings. All provably false IFF you take a second to dig. Unfortunately most people don’t.
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p>As Christopher pointed out early in this diary, communication and education is the best defense.
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p>
… but I had to award a bonus point for the use of a somewhat technical logic term(“IFF”).
The Republicans are trying to find every reason than can to insist that they are a significant force to which the media must play close attention. Thus,
They’re working the refs. “We’re important! We’re popular! We’ll win! You must interview us.”
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p>Only they’re not popular. They show just as much care about what’s true as Senator Conryn’s disgusting distortion of economics.
In the 90s he was a master media manipulator, especially when it came to getting sound bites out. I remember reading an interview with him talking about not caring if there was another soul on the floor as long as the CSPAN camera was on. He also did things like reading long statements into the Congressional record in the middle of the night so he could cite them later. Interesting guy.
They’re definitely profiting off the country’s amnesia about the Gingrich-Hastert-Delay years. Maybe would could follow JoeTS’s History Monday with Delay Tuesdays and Newt Thursdays.
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p>We should move quickly before they raise a motion to recommit.
I’ve also heard the analysis that boils down to – Republicans were elected by Democrats who STAYED HOME.
to the assault weapon ban.
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p>It turned out that it was immensely popular. The majority of people thought that semiautomatic weapons should be banned. Yet it was a big loser at the polls. Why?
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p>People who liked the ban didn’t reward their legislator with votes. It wasn’t their number one issue. It didn’t, in itself, win legislators many votes, and it certainly didn’t motivate people who might have stayed home to come to the polls.
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p>People who disliked the ban were in the minority, but man did they hate the ban. They’d have crawled through the mud to vote against the son’bitch who voted to take away gun rights.
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p>It only takes swinging a few percent of the vote to result in a massive swing in the election. Just ask the Dems in 2006 and 2008. I don’t know for sure if the assault weapons ban resulted in that swing, but I’ve always figured that it did. The Dems have been much cooler on restricting gun ownership rights ever since.
Call our Senators & Congress-peoples and make sure they reinvest in America.
Encourage our family & friends in other states to do the same… especially in Maine and Nebraska, and Montana because Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
Final vote total per DailyKos was 69,456,000 to 59,934,000 – not that it matters but in another year Republicans will have convinced the press and the public it was 61 million vs 60 million…not the actual 10 million it was…
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p>What do we do?
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p>A) Be Democrats, let them be Republicans.
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p>2) Don’t panic, fear is the enemy.
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p>3) Don’t project, live in the moment.
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p>Rinse, lather, repeat.
Clinton tried to out-Republican them. It didn’t help.
But with this stimulus?
Jeb Bush in 2012?
0.0025%. Of $800 billion dollars, that is what Massachusetts is receiving from the $800 billion? bailout. This is hoe the true bluest state in the democratic party is rewarded(?). As I’ve mentioned before, this absolute power thing ain’t working out too good.
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p> http://www.bostonherald.com/bu…
The article you like to says that MA would receive over $2 billion from the stimulus. Rounding the amount MA gets down to $2 billion and rounding the stimulus up to $800 billion, that’s .25%, not .0025%.
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p>That also assumes–as one of the commenters on that article points out, that all of the $800 billion can be attributable to different states. It appears from Fitzgerald’s style that he was just writing about specific capital projects for trains and such, not for national programs like the multiple tax cuts that ended up watering down the stimulative power of the package.
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p>So while MA probably didn’t get an even share (which would be about 2%, or one fiftieth), neither did it get as little as your comment suggests.