42, according to Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. 42 has a less happy meaning for Republicans: it’s the number of years, from 1952 to 1994, that the party went without winning a majority in the House of Representatives.
The GOP is about three years into its current stint as the minority party. The present Republican strategy for retaking the House is to hunker down in a conservative bunker and wait – for the bad memories of the Bush era to fade and for Obama and the Democrats to overreach themselves. That way, when the public turns back to the only alternative provided them in a two-party system, the GOP will regain its majority without having had to reach out to moderates or adjust its hard-right ideology.
This strategy will be vindicated if the GOP retakes the House in the 2010 or 2012 elections. But what if it doesn’t? What if the price of stasis is another forty-year trek through the political wilderness? Is it worth sticking to litmus-test conservative Republicanism if it means Democratic domination until 2048?
The current number of Republicans in the House (178) is pretty close to the average number (174) of Republicans in that chamber during the party’s four-decade rump status. In its recent history, the party has only twice managed the forty-seat jump it would need to regain the majority in 2010. The 47-seat gain of 1966 was something of a statistical correction, coming after the GOP had been dragged down to Depression-era lows by the Goldwater election debacle of 1964. The 54-seat leap of 1994, however, was more like a genuine political realignment. It is surely that election’s success that Republican strategists are hoping to replicate in the contests of the next few years.
Optimists can point to a number of GOP-leaning factors from 1994 that seem to be repeating themselves: a first-term Democratic president stumbling over the issue of health care, an unpopular Democratic Congress, a public worried over mounting deficits, and excellent early candidate recruitment by the National Republican Congressional Committee. There are even more dissimilarities, however, of which the most important may be that the current Republican leadership does not have anyone remotely like Newt Gingrich, who as House Republican Whip was the chief agent of the Republican resurgence of 1994.
Gingrich is generally conceded to have made a hash of his career as Speaker from 1995 to 1999, and he’s in some danger of following Harold Stassen’s example as a perennial, hopeless presidential candidate. But in bringing the GOP back to a majority in the House, he succeeded where even Ronald Reagan had failed, and his historic success in the ’94 elections puts him among the 20th century’s most significant Republicans.
Analysts who have tried to explain Gingrich’s strategy typically overlook the fact that although he led what was considered to be a conservative “revolution” in 1994, he himself was anything but a conventional conservative. In fact, when he became involved with politics in the late 1960s, as a Ph.D. student in history at Tulane University, he was a moderate or even liberal Republican.
At the 1968 Republican presidential convention, Gingrich was one of liberal New York governor Nelson Rockefeller’s strongest Southern supporters. After becoming a history professor at West Georgia State University, he narrowly missed election to Congress in 1974 and 1976, running as a moderate against a segregationist Democrat. Most of Gingrich’s biographers have assumed that he gained election to Congress in 1978 by abandoning his former positions and converting to Southern-fried conservatism, but there’s considerable evidence that Gingrich himself does not share that view. As he told an interviewer in 1989, his goal was to build the GOP as “a caring, humanitarian reform party.” He believed that “one of the gravest mistakes the Reagan administration made was its failure to lead aggressively in civil rights.” He identified with “the classic moderate wing of the party, where, as a former Rockefeller state chairman, I’ve spent most of my life.”
Gingrich also spent a good deal of time with the conservative wing of the GOP, of course, helping to found the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS) in the House in 1983 and mobilizing the shock troops of the Moral Majority. But he consistently proclaimed himself a “big tent” Republican who served as a bridge between conservatives in the COS and moderates in the counterpart 92 Group. His view of himself as a “Theodore Roosevelt Republican” described his preference for progressive, pragmatic reform and a more active role for government than many of his erstwhile right-wing allies were willing to contemplate. His enthusiasm for greater government involvement in technological innovation and space exploration, including much higher spending on NASA as well as the “Star Wars” antimissile program, earned him the nickname “Newt Skywalker.” Gingrich’s idea-driven, eclectic, heterodox conservatism was attractive to many moderates, as were many of the specific programs he advocated such as tax cuts, welfare reform, spending reductions, decentralization, urban renewal, improved government accountability, and so forth.
Stylistically, Gingrich’s scorched-earth attacks on Democrats, and on Congress as an institution, stunned moderates and some conservatives too. (Steven Gillon’s 2008 study The Pact, about the relationship between Gingrich and Bill Clinton, refers on page 106 to the Republican as a “firebrand rebel who had an instinct for the juggler.” The typo suggests a snarling Gingrich leaping at the throat of a terrified circus performer, which actually conveys rather accurately how many members of Congress viewed him in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.) However, the House Democrats’ worsening abuse of their majority power – in matters including denying adequate staff to the minority party, excluding Republicans from committee deliberations, and even stealing elections – convinced many moderates that Gingrich’s strategy of ruthless confrontation was the only way to overturn the entrenched and corrupt Democratic majority. Gingrich alone had “the vision to build a majority party,” according to Connecticut moderate Congresswoman Nancy Johnson, as well as “the strength and charisma to do it.”
Minnesota moderate Republican Bill Frenzel nominated Gingrich for House Republican whip in 1989, and Maine’s Olympia Snowe seconded the nomination. Moderates supported Gingrich over the more conciliatory candidate of the older conservatives, Illinois’ Ed Madigan, and Gingrich carried the New England delegation by a 7-3 vote. “There’s no question that I would not be House Republican whip if activists in the moderate wing had not supported me,” Gingrich recalled. “I regard my election as a coalition victory for activists of all the ideological views of the Republican Party.”
Gingrich led Republicans to victory in 1994 by nationalizing the election, making each local contest a referendum on Bill Clinton and the perceived leftish Democratic excesses of his first two years in office. However, Gingrich was careful to keep divisive social issues out of the “Contract with America,” and he supplied money, guidance, and logistical assistance to moderate and conservative candidates alike. Despite later claims, the “Contract” did not much influence the election; 71 percent of voters polled during election week had never even heard of it. But it was a brilliant move on Gingrich’s part, because it symbolized the public’s desire for action-oriented, accountable government, allowed him to keep Republican candidates on-message, and would give him an unusual degree of discipline over his party (at least for a while) when he became Speaker.
The “freshman class” of 73 Republican representatives who swept into office famously included a core of deep-dyed conservatives, many of whom would go on to have long political careers, such as current Senators Tom Coburn and John Ensign and South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. “You won’t believe what a bunch of ideologues you are going to have to deal with,” Gingrich’s advisor told him on the ’94 election night. “They are going to kill you.” That prediction would prove substantially correct, as the two dozen or so “True Believers” in the freshman class proved to be much more conservative than Gingrich. They harassed him constantly on his right flank, pressured him into some his worst errors (such as the government shutdowns of 1995), and eventually led to his undoing as Speaker.
But the Class of ‘94 also included more than a dozen moderates. The Republican Party that took over the House in 1995 was a much more geographically and ideologically balanced party than the GOP today. Republicans had exactly the same percentage of Southern House seats (53%) as they do now, but a far greater share of Northeastern seats (almost 46% in 1995-96 versus a mere 18% today). Because the party was bigger and more nationally representative, the South accounted for only one-third of the total Republican delegation versus almost half today.
The present GOP leadership will happily follow Gingrich’s perceived lesson that obstruction, polarization, and controversy is the path for a minority party to become the majority party someday. But it seems less willing to follow the other component of his historic example, which is that moderates are a necessary part of a conservative-led Republican coalition, that the party cannot succeed by writing off any region or group of Americans, and that the party needs at least some level of moderate understanding and approval in order to achieve majority status. If conservatives would rather go it alone, they might want to keep the number 42 in mind.
35 responses so far
1 ottovbvs // Aug 8, 2009 at 10:35 am
……This is rich since it’s possible to trace the start of the real decline of the GOP as a center right party with pragmatic and commonsense solutions to our problems from the time when Gingrich and his group of far right bomb throwers arrived in congress and started to dominate conservative discourse by their extremist tactics and incendiary rhetoric. From shutting down the govt to the ludicrous impeachment effort Gingrich and his followers showed the way and others have followed. Gingrich didn’t survive his own revolution….swept away by hubris and personal corruption but his legacy has infected the GOP with the virus which David Frum so often speaks about.
2 barker13 // Aug 8, 2009 at 10:38 am
“Pragmatism, Not Ideology, Won the House in 1994.”
Where the frig were YOU in ‘94…???
I was here – in America.
I was also here in ‘92 and ‘93. (*SNORT*)
What the heck are you blabbering about…?!?!
There’s a REASON it was called the “Republican Revolution,” and that reason isn’t just that the Republicans won.
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
A combination of beating the hell out of individual liberal (and even “moderate”) Democrats and attacking the corruption, incompetence, and hypocrisy of the Democratic Washington “machine” along with the bright, optimistic, forward looking message of the Contract With America was responsible for what occurred in November ‘94.
(Oh, yeah… and Clinton of course.) (*WINK*)
So, yeah… I’m pretty sure ideology played a part. (*SMIRK*)
BILL
3 Churl // Aug 8, 2009 at 11:09 am
Another Kabaservice post about a Republican “moderate” who, in the long run, accomplished precisely nothing for conservatism.
4 ottovbvs // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Churl // Aug 8, 2009 at 11:09 am
“Another Kabaservice post about a Republican “moderate”
………..Gingrich is a Republican “moderate”…….it’s hard to make these delusionists up
5 sinz54 // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:11 pm
All revolutions are born in chaos.
The Republicans could never have won in 1994, if HillaryCare had been a big success the year earlier.
Bill Clinton had given an SOTU in which he waved around a prototype U.S. Health Care Card “which can never be taken away,” he said.
Then the conservatives stopped HillaryCare cold.
And the public became disgusted with a President who promised and couldn’t deliver.
The liberals never recovered from that failure. Clinton turned moderate.
That’s the way for an opposition party to win: Stymie the incumbent, and then run against the failures and incompetence of the incumbent for failing to get anything done.
And that’s what the GOP is doing now: They’re focused and committed on stopping ObamaCare cold. While the liberal “netroots” are disheartened and confused: Their hearts belong to single-payer, while they have to reassure the voters that single-payer isn’t anywhere in the ObamaCare bill. Many have flatly refused to be so duplicitous. Good for them.
Stop ObamaCare–or weaken it to the point that it’s almost irrelevant–and the Dems will turn on each other. And the GOP will take advantage.
6 balconesfault // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:12 pm
I’ve long thought that Republican gains in 1994 would have been far smaller had they not put their pledge to impose term limits on Congress. A lot of the “pox on Washington” voters turned out in large part on that pledge. When the proposal failed in Congress, Republicans could have still gained ideological traction had they resigned after 12 years … but instead America saw plenty of those Reps and Senators who came in as freshmen in 1994 running for their third Senate term or 7th Congressional term in 2006.
Perhaps that’s a contributing factor to why 2006 was the turning point for Republicans in Congress? At that point, the myth of Republicans fighting against entrenched Washington interests was exposed … 12 years has passed, and here’s what some of the architects of the Contract for America are up to:
John Kyl is the Senate Majority Whip … Dick Lugar is the Senior Republican in the US Senate … John Boehner is House Minority Leader … other signatories to the Congract included Hatch, Snowe, and Hutchison. This pretty much killed the idea of the Republican Party being made up of “citizen statesmen” who would hold office then return home to tend their businesses (other, like Trent Lott, went straight into Washington lobbying jobs after they left office), and proved them instead to simply be the same power-accumulating opportunists they accuse Democrats of being.
7 ottovbvs // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:16 pm
sinz54 // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:11 pm
“Stop ObamaCare–or weaken it to the point that it’s almost irrelevant–and the Dems will turn on each other. And the GOP will take advantage.”
………So you admit the Republican strategy…..it’s all about politics and screw the public good…..pleased we got that clear……the problem for self delusionists like Sinz is that Obama understands this completely and he’s not going to let it happen……..single payer btw isn’t even remotely on the agenda and never has been but don’t let that interfere with your version of events.
8 ottovbvs // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:20 pm
sinz54 // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:11 pm
……you spent the last six months claiming the stimulus program was going to be a failure now that we’re starting to see us come out of the Bush recession it’s healthcare reform that’s going to fail…..we’ll see
9 jreb // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm
ottovbvs says
“..single payer btw isn’t even remotely on the agenda and never has been but don’t let that interfere with your version of events.”
Obama in 2003 at a AFLCIO conference
“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
10 barker13 // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:11 pm
Re: Balconesfault // Aug 8, 2009 at 12:12 pm –
“Republicans could have still gained ideological traction had they resigned after 12 years … but instead America saw plenty of those Reps and Senators who came in as freshmen in 1994 running for their third Senate term or 7th Congressional term in 2006.”
True! No doubt about it! This is why Republicans like me turned against the GOP even when it meant voting for liberal Democrats in ‘06 (John Hall, my congressman, and others) and refusing to vote for McCain in ‘08 even knowing every vote lost to McCain was a vote closer to an Obama presidency with a Democratic Congress.
“…the myth of Republicans fighting against entrenched Washington interests…”
Let’s give credit where credit is due. The “Freshman Class of ‘94″ largely walked the walk from ‘94-’98 – some might argue through ‘02. In any event, not nit-picking, but it’s unfair and inaccurate to infer that the transformation from “Republican Revolutionaries” to RINOs was overnight.
BILL
11 barker13 // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Re: Jreb // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm –
(*NOD*)
It’s not the stupidity… the wrongheadedness… it’s the dishonesty that gets to me.
BILL
12 ottovbvs // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:22 pm
jreb // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm
……..Er…….this was six years ago long before he became a candidate for president and it has never been part of his platform……you might as well say he’s for motherhood and apple pie
13 sinz54 // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:27 pm
balconesfault: Most of Gingrich’s “Contract with America” was actually implemented.
The big mistake was overreach: They had identified some $700 billion in cuts to the budget they wanted to make, many from social programs. The public said no; they wanted fat and waste and corruption removed, but not the “meat” of those programs. That’s why Clinton won that showdown with Gingrich.
All ideologues, whether they’re named Gingrich or Obama, have a tendency to fall into the same trap: They think that just because they won an election, that the public has become as ideologically radicalized as they.
Gingrich and Obama won on platforms of reform, not ideological transformation. And when their hard-core supporters refused to accept that, is when they both ran into trouble.
14 balconesfault // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Barker:
“Let’s give credit where credit is due. The “Freshman Class of ‘94″ largely walked the walk from ‘94-’98 – some might argue through ‘02.”
LOL – some might argue … until they had the seniority to become entrenched in Washington themselves.
” In any event, not nit-picking, but it’s unfair and inaccurate to infer that the transformation from “Republican Revolutionaries” to RINOs was overnight.”
Wanting to hold onto power doesn’t make one a RINO. Some of these are the most conservative members of the Republican party.
The problem is that Republicans hate entrenched Washington politicians until its the entranched Washington politician who is full-in on their agenda … just the same as they hate an activist judge until the judge is an activist for conservative ideology.
But there are a lot of voters who don’t fit cleanly into the Republican ideology … they just dislike Washington taking their money, whether its for welfare or war, medicare or the drug enforcement agency. They don’t consider those Contract for America’ers who stayed in Washington (and helped push through Bush’s Medicare expansion in 2003) to be RINOs. They consider them to be Republicans.
15 greg_barton // Aug 8, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Man, Frum, trying these classic rhetorical tactics will get you nowhere. (i.e. painting your own views as in line with a popular idea of your target audience.) Next you’ll be saying that Reagan was a pragmatist and welcomed moderate Republican views.
Wait…Reagan did raise taxes in seven out of his eight budgets…
Maybe you have a point.
16 aDude // Aug 8, 2009 at 11:22 pm
When you take the longer view (1964 to 1994), you’ll see that the Republican triumph was less a shifting of ideology and more a shift of party affiliation. For decades some of the strongest conservatives in Congress were Southern Democrats. Because of seniority rules they had the chair of major committees and were able to thwart the will of liberal Democrats in the White House. FDR had more trouble with his own party than he did with Republicans.
However, Congress met its match in LBJ. He was able to get his legislation through even the most intransigent committee chairmen. There was nothing like getting the “Johnson Treatment.” (I can’t wait for Robert Caro’s treatment of the LBJ White House years). But he knew there would be a price. When he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 he told his aides that the Democratic Party had just lost the South for a generation.
He was right. However, because of a tendency to re-elect incumbents, many conservative Southern Democrats kept their seats for another decade or so. However, within a generation, the Republicans were in fact building the solid South. Southern voters switched from conservative Democrats to conservative Republicans. Again, it was a change of party affiliation, not a change of ideological inclination.
The strategy of making the Republican Party more narrowly conservative fit the Southern Strategy begun under Nixon, but it also had the side effect of turning away conservatives whose views were not quite that narrow. Again, as in the South, the tendency of voters to re-elect incumbents kept many of these Republicans in Congress until over time they were replaced by moderate Democrats. Now, there isn’t a single Republican Congressman in all of New England, and only three in the state of New York.
1994 was a triumph for the Republican Party. But it was a triumph of tactics, not of strategy.
17 barker13 // Aug 9, 2009 at 8:58 am
Re: Sinz54 // Aug 8, 2009 at 1:27 pm –
“The public said no; they wanted fat and waste and corruption removed, but not the “meat” of those programs.”
No. I don’t think it’s nearly that simple. What it was is that back then the MSM still basically controlled the dialog and the symbiotic relationship between the Clinton White House and the MSM overwhelmed the Republican position.
* Note though… think of how often the libs on this site (not you, Sinz, I’m referring to Balc for example) bring up how the GOP spent, spent, spent. Well… fair enough… except that… can you imagine any of our lib regulars here having FAVORED the $700 billion in cuts Sinz identifies as the GOP proposal back then?
No… here’s where the hypocrisy and double-talk comes in. Again I point to Balc as a perfect example of the type. (*SHRUG*)
Re: Adude // Aug 8, 2009 at 11:22 pm –
Interesting. Yes, there’s a lot of truth in what you’ve posted. Thanks.
BILL
18 ProfNickD // Aug 9, 2009 at 8:59 am
The goal, for conservatives, is not for Republicans to “win the House.” The goal is to make the country more conservative. Whether republicans win anything ever again, or even remain a viable party, is irrelevant.
19 sinz54 // Aug 9, 2009 at 9:11 am
adude sez: “When you take the longer view (1964 to 1994), you’ll see that the Republican triumph was less a shifting of ideology and more a shift of party affiliation.”
No. There really was a shift in ideology.
The Great Stagflation of the 1970s, and the Reagan stock market boom of the 1980s, shifted American’s perceptions of government. And the collapse of the USSR under Reagan, something that virtually no liberals had ever thought was possible, cemented the GOP advantage in foreign affairs and national defense, until the Bush 43 administration damaged that perception.
In the 1960s, liberal ideas were ascendant. It was taken for granted that government had to be the employer of last resort (creating things like FDR’s WPA); that the way to fight inflation was with wage-and-price controls; and that government could engineer society to be more humane and diverse. Polls showed that some 60% of Americans “trusted the Federal Government to do the right thing most of the time.” And that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were not only in peaceful coexistence, but were “converging” to some middle ground.
Those days are ended.
Nobody but hard-core liberals believe those things anymore.
20 ottovbvs // Aug 9, 2009 at 10:16 am
sinz54 // Aug 9, 2009 at 9:11 am
“Those days are ended.
Nobody but hard-core liberals believe those things anymore.”
……….It’s statements like this that convince me doctrinaire conservatives are completely out of touch with what’s happening in the country………the 8 years ending in 2008 saw the testing to destruction of just about the entire canon of right wing ideas which left the country in the worst economic and financial crisis since the depression, embroiled in two military fiascoes, and with our global prestige and diplomatic clout in tatters. This produced a decisive rejection of the Republican party at the polls and in defeat they increasingly show signs of becoming a southern rump party with bizarre obsessions about things like birth certificates……….By definition most of the people who post here are interested in politics and follow events fairly closely…….for most of the country that’s not true politics goes on in about 25% of their tv screen……the rest is given over to earning a living, taking care of the kids, cutting the grass and other mundane concerns and that’s why so much of this trivial stuff in which people wag polls at each other (I do it too) is largely irrelevant…….the things that matter electorally are demographics, the national mood, and American’s broad perception of the players……….Sinz and those who think like him want to focus on trivia but the trends tell a different story and it’s not one that has a lot of good news for Republicans……but if it makes them feel better
21 Cforchange // Aug 9, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Sinz on your #5, of course we all know the tactic but is it good for America? I’m getting too old and disgusted for some of our problems not to be solved.
Healthcare has stopped my business from growing. I can’t provide it and I can’t pay someone to buy it themselves. The “protesting greys” of the GOP probably won’t work as it did with Clinton. There are soooo many voters who either don’t have insurance or are in my boat – can’t provide it to employees. This fact can’t be reconciled.
While parts of our system are astoundingly supreme – healthcare providing is not near perfect. Consider again how we handle our mental health issues – we ignore or push them out in the street. We silently push them home where they can influence or harm others. Worse yet, we let them in their isolation reach epic mania. We let them have rights that they can’t manage and would not be available if they were cared for properly. We and their families enable them, they purchase weapons and hatch plots to harm others. Sometimes they accomplish their mission – you need to look at the women injured and killed in Pittsburgh this week – the killer’s mother was advised in advance of the plan. Weapon’s for this slaughter came from the same vendor who supplied the VA Tech shooter. Hmmm, things perfect???
Sometimes it is better to look at the whole instead of one’s personal self. I believe we are in those times. It may be a tough pill to swallow allowing the other team to take the glory for tackling one of our most stiffling issues of the day, so be it. The GOP has been asleep in the DC fairyland and the majority voter has called them out on it. Remember John McCain thought the average salary was $500,000 – oh I dunno!
22 balconesfault // Aug 9, 2009 at 1:05 pm
“Note though… think of how often the libs on this site (not you, Sinz, I’m referring to Balc for example) bring up how the GOP spent, spent, spent. Well… fair enough… except that… can you imagine any of our lib regulars here having FAVORED the $700 billion in cuts Sinz identifies as the GOP proposal back then?”
What’s the advice from Polonius to Hamlet?
“To thine own self be true.”
23 balconesfault // Aug 9, 2009 at 1:18 pm
cforchange: “Healthcare has stopped my business from growing.”
This is one of the main reasons I became convinced a national healthcare plan is a necessity. That, and the extraordinary resource allocation burden I think it places on our healthcare system to not have primary care easily available to everyone in America, resulting in too many people ending up in emergency rooms to deal with things that could have been nipped in the bud early for much less cost, and no coherent way to deal with major epidemics.
I’ve long believed that a national plan will stimulate a massive boom in entrepreneurism in this country. What’s more, businesses that compete globally are at a disadvantage versus their global competitors who have national systems picking up their healthcare tabs.
One particular bit of rhetoric I wish everyone would abandon – the issue of whether healthcare is a “right”. Of course it’s not. Neither is welfare, neither is medicare, even public education shouldn’t be considered a “right”. Fire protection isn’t a right. Government condemning someone elses land to build a road from your development back to the city isn’t a right.
Instead, they’re things that we the people might decide are a good idea to provide to enhance our collective prosperity.
24 ottovbvs // Aug 9, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Cforchange // Aug 9, 2009 at 1:00 pm
“Sinz on your #5, of course we all know the tactic but is it good for America? I’m getting too old and disgusted for some of our problems not to be solved.”
……..This is where I’m coming from……health insurance was hardly on my radar until the early 90’s but during the 90’s and into the 2000’s as I got more and more exposed to what a huge burden it is for business and the personal problems it causes for individuals I’m became a complete convert to the need to fix healthcare which I consider one of the major structural problems facing this country……For some reason the GOP out of ideology, habit, checks from the healthcare industry or just bloody mindedness about the democrats have got it into their heads to resist any real changes to the system……they’ve lost large parts of US business on this issue and even the healthcare industry itself realizes change has to come. When the you have the pharmaceutical industry planning a $150 million tv ad campaign in support of reform over the next couple of months it has to tell you something…….Unfortunately the GOP has brainwashed people like Sinz who in the supreme irony lives in MA and they have such a rigid ideological outlook they can’t look to the national interest or even the general public good
25 greg_barton // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:25 pm
That’s just the thing, ottovbvs: the public good is not on their minds. It’s the individual good that is ascendant. Now they have some myths that help them believe that promoting the individual good actually contributes to the public good, but that’s just so they can sell their snake oil to the foolish. Indeed, selfishness is a great motivator, but it cannot be the only one.
26 ottovbvs // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:28 pm
greg_barton // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:25 pm
…….I don’t know whether they are dim or selfish or some combo…….it’s irrational but we’re all irrational to some extent they just have it bad.
27 nels96 // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:42 pm
There is only one infallible, unstoppable way to get Term Limits: NEVER REELECT ANY INCUMBENT!
Most folks think I am too unreasonable in asking everyone to NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS. They think it’s an extremist position. But that’s the whole point! Congress will never listen to us UNLESS we scare the bejesus out of them! To drive the point home, NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS.
The closer we get to a “Voter’s One-Term Congress”, the closer we’ll get to real term limits on Congress, and thus a “Citizen’s Congress.
There is only one way to make term limits happen : The American voter can IMPOSE term limits on Congress by NEVER REELECTING anyone in Congress. In other words, don’t let anyone serve more than one term. That’s the only way to teach them that the voter is boss! The “one term limit” can be eased AFTER we citizens get control of Congress.
Congress will never allow us to constitutionally term limit them. Our only choice is to NEVER REELECT them.
Remember too, it makes no difference who you vote for, as long as it is NEVER any incumbent.
Backup for this reasoning follows:
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS
I believe that even a little success in a campaign to NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS would move us a long way toward a revolutionary change in American politics, much like 1776. Some of the reasons in favor of this approach:
• Gives us a one-term, term limited Congress without using amendments
• It would be supported by 70% of the country who want term limits Congress
• It is completely non-partisan
• If repeated, it ends career politicians dominating Congress
• It opens the way to a “citizen Congress”
• It ends the seniority system that keeps freshmen powerless
• It doesn’t cost you any money. Just don’t vote for any incumbent
• It is the only infallible, unstoppable way to “Throw All the Bums Out”
• It takes effect immediately on Election Day
NEVER REELECT ANYONE IN CONGRESS.
Nelson Lee Walker of tenurecorrupts.com
28 ottovbvs // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:50 pm
nels96 // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:42 pm
…….I’m in favor of term limits but it doesn’t seem a good idea to elect a completely new bunch of hicks in the house every two years and ditto in the senate. Probably four terms as a congressman and two as a senator would be reasonable but it’s never going to happen
29 barker13 // Aug 9, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Re: Nels96 // Aug 9, 2009 at 2:42 pm (#27) –
Yep. Agreed. I’ve felt the same way for years.
I actually tried (and succeeded – if you wanna call it that) back in ‘06 when I voted FOR Democrat John Hall and AGAINST my RINO incumbent Sue Kelly.
Thing is… as I’ve indicated on other threads… while libertarian-leaning true conservatives are often capable of cutting off their noses to spite their faces, the Democrat Party’s more “pragmatic” liberal base is unlikely to echo folks like me.
Do you think there’s a chance in hell of getting even mildly partisan Dems to consider voting against Dem incumbents knowing that this means an automatic loss of the House? (I’m not sure what the numbers are in the Senate…)
And if Rush Limbaugh and every single major conservative/traditionalist/libertarian “name voice” in the nation were to engage in a unified call for conservative/traditionalist/libertarian voters to simply vote AGAINST the incombent NO MATTER WHAT – no matter who he or she is or whether they like him or not – even assuming broad sympathy and a DESIRE to follow though… how many Republicans would so distrust Democratic voters doing the same that they’d simply refuse to “unilaterally disarm?”
Hey… maybe if you had Bill and Hillary Clinton… Ralph Nader… Newt Gingrich… George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush… Colin Powell…
(You get the idea!)
…ALL begging the American People to simply “throw ALL the bums out,” how many folks would “trust” in the integrity of “the other side” enough to risk “unilateral disarmament?”
Me? Out of “pragmatism” I still see a military coup (not gonna happen!) as our only potential salvation.
(*SNORT*) (And what does THAT say about my level of pessimism and disgust…???) (*SHRUG*)
BILL
30 sinz54 // Aug 9, 2009 at 8:46 pm
ireign sez: “The biggest issue is not the number of people without health care, it is that health care sucks. Krauthammer had a number of suggestions (some good and some bad) but this bill doesn’t address any of them.”
That’s absolutely right!
Health insurance “reform” can knock a fixed percentage off of health care costs. But the rate of increase of health care costs won’t be reduced at all. Not even if you completely zeroed out all the insurance companies’ profits.
In America, the rate of increase of health care costs is about 1.6% above the rate of increase of GDP. That’s in line with the situations in all the developed nations, including those with single-payer. That accurately reflects the truly increasing real cost of medical care itself, not who pays for it. To reduce that rate of increase, we have to change how health care is delivered–without sacrificing the effectiveness of treatment.
In fairness, the ObamaCare bill does spend some money to automate medical record keeping. At my hospital, my doctors have told me that 55% (at least) of their workday goes into manual record keeping. Yes,they still work by writing handwritten notes into loose-leaf volumes. With all the inefficiency and potential for human error that involves. Automating all that would improve productivity dramatically.
So would eliminating unnecessary tests. Whenever I’m referred to another doctor, he insists on doing the exact same tests all over again for himself. Yet our parathyroid hormone, phosphorus, and other levels don’t change significantly from one week to the next. Obama mentioned this problem in his presser; but I don’t know if there’s anything about it in the bill.
The problem YOU mentioned, has to do with whether a doctor is needed for routine ear infections and other routine problems. I say that we should train lots more Nurse Practitioners (NPs). Their first-hand experience gives them hard-won knowledge comparable to many doctors. And they’re legally allowed to make diagnoses and prescribe drugs. Yet they’re paid much less than doctors. (On the other hand, America can live with fewer boob jobs–what a waste of money that is.)
BTW: Another reason the economy may pick up, is the massive injection of liquidity (far exceeding the stimulus bill) by the Fed. Including, you’ll notice, interest rates that were bouncing around zero for a while.
31 balconesfault // Aug 9, 2009 at 11:05 pm
“A stimulus actually injects money quickly into the economy. All we did was add additional gov spending into the future. Hardly a great idea. ”
Not necessarily. If there is capital in private hands that’s not being invested, for fear there will be no potential for profits in the future – then additional government spending into the future demonstrates a demand for certain services, and thus stimulates investment into those sectors.
In some ways, this was far more responsible than just pumping money quickly into the economy this instant … because that would have likely have already created significant inflationary pressures, and because it would have been difficult to ensure that the money would have been spent in responsible ways. It could, very likely, have created one more short term “bubble” that would have burst leaving us nothing to show except some short-term inflated assets.
Think of it this way. You run a steel mill. Construction is rapidly dimishing, it looks like there is a glut of new office and shopping space thanks to the super-low interest rates over the last 8 years, growing unemployment, and falling retail sales. You have to decide if you’re going to keep producing steel at margins that barely justify keeping your factory open. You have no idea when the business cycle will reverse.
Government puts a lot of money up promising to spend it on bridges and transmission lines and other infrastructure that will create a new demand for your steel, paced out over the next 2-3 years.
Does that change your calculus?
Krugman’s criticism, meanwhile, is not the pacing of the stimulus, so much as it being about half as much as he thinks the economy needed.
32 ottovbvs // Aug 10, 2009 at 8:52 am
ireign // Aug 9, 2009 at 7:39 pm
‘Last time, I checked the stimulus plan did not work and most of the dollars haven’t even been spent.”
………..So why is the economy starting to turn around and why do most reputable economists reckon it has a) saved about a million jobs and b) added about 1% to growth in the second quarter.
……….The stimulus plan has been designed as a slow release agent feeding money into the economy over a 21 month period…..so far about $100-200 billion has been paid out in tax reductions, rebates and transfers to the states…..most of the balance much of it for infrastructure projects that are big jog creators will be spent between now and the end of next year
” Even liberals like Paul Krugman concede the stimulus was not a great bill”
………Krugman didn’t think it was big enough!!……he wasn’t arguing with the concept, no reputable economist did!
……….Thanks for the benefit of your economic expertise irreign
33 DFL // Aug 10, 2009 at 10:16 am
It is a given in American politics that parties who have political responsibility thrust upon it tend to lose seats in non-presidential elections. Your political enemies become galvanized, those in mushy middle become more skeptical, and even parts of your base become disillusioned. Bad events occur and you’re more likely to be damned for your failures than be lauded for your successes. The best scenario for the Republicans in restoring its congressional majorities is a two-term Obama presidency. The year 2014 ought to be a very bad year for Democrats if Obama is re-elected in 2012. President Obama’s failures will create the next Republican majority.
One cause of the 1994 Republican sweep Mr. Kabaservice does not acknowledge is that the formation of odd-looking majority-minority districts created a score and more Republican districts in the South. By packing minority Democratic voters in a small number of districts, many rural districts in the South transformed themselves from being represented by conservative or moderate Democrats to districts represented by conservative Republicans.
34 ottovbvs // Aug 10, 2009 at 3:18 pm
dfl // Aug 10, 2009 at 10:16 am
” One cause of the 1994 Republican sweep Mr. Kabaservice does not acknowledge is that the formation of odd-looking majority-minority districts created a score and more Republican districts in the South”
……Gerrymandering is a uniquely Democratic activity……..okaaaay…..actually it’s an equal opportunity activity(and usually mutually assisted btw)……which is what makes the Democrats wresting so many Republican house seats that have been gerrymandered to death so surprising…..While I can’t disagree with the comments on pendulum swings you ignore several factors like the power of incumbency so a major party has to really screw up in govt to lose a lot of seats…..it’s also depends enormously on demographics, the general mood of the country and its perception of the overall competence of the parties and their leaders……..I suppose Republicans could magically transform popular perceptions of their competency…..of course they also have five years in the wilderness in your scenario in which to continue behaving like idiots.
35 William_F_Tell // Aug 16, 2009 at 8:23 am
Hi Geoff,
I think you have hit the nail on the head here, and it’s already playing out even in the 2009 off year gubernatorial race in Virginia. The Washington Post has an article today on Robert F. McDonnell, doing much of his campaigning in Northern Virginia (Obama Country). It helps, of course, that he grew up in Fairfax County.
http://tinyurl.com/mfsa5j
I assume a similar approach is taking place in the NJ gubernatorial race as well by Christie. If those two candidates win, that will re-establish some important footholds for GOP fundraising and candidate recruitment in 2010.
Question: Are Democratic members of Congress bound by any rules to vote for Pelosi as Speaker? Let’s say for example next year the GOP pick up 30 seats in the House but not the majority. What if instead of nominating one of their own for Speaker, the GOP offer to vote en masse for one of the Blue Dogs as Speaker? If I were a Blue Dog, I would totally consider it. Pelosi is like an albatross around their necks.
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