I am an incurable optimist.
Many folks have drawn parallels between 1994 and 2010, dreaming that the Republicans will pick up the 50 or so seats in the House and 7 or so seats in the Senate. I think such a victory is indeed possible.
Perhaps we ought to dream bigger.
1894 was a much more momentous election. Mismanagement by the Cleveland administration and the Panic of 1893 caused a massive turn to the GOP–with the Party recapturing the House by winning 130 seats in the House–”the largest midterm election victory in the entire history of the United States.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections,_1894
Not only was the 1894 election win massive, but it was followed, unlike 1994, with a decisive victory by the GOP in the following presidential election. So decisive was the victory in 1894-1896, that America entered a period of thirty years of economic growth, GOP dominance, with the Republicans successfully championing fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, and consumption (not income) taxes (mainly tariffs) as the way to pay for federal expenditures. This was the era that gave us the third greatest Republican President in US history–Calvin Coolidge (after, of course, the Great Emancipators, Lincoln and Reagan).
Dare to dream, my friends.
I hope you are correct
pilgrim Thursday, November 12th at 11:53AM EST (link)There is one big difference between now and 1894. The big difference is that Barack Obama is not anything like Grover Cleveland. Grover Cleveland denounced his own Democratic Party. He called their politics in 1894 “party perfidy and party dishonor”. That year the Democrat controlled congress passed a law that included an income tax of 2% on incomes over $4,000 annually. It was in a tariff bill it did reduce the tariff, and so Cleveland let the bill become law without signing it. In this political atmosphere the Democrats were hammered in the 1894 midterm elections, resulting in a 244 to 105 Republican majority in the House.
Adding to the Democrat’s woes was a significant Supreme Court ruling handed down in 1895. The only part of the 1894 Wilson-Gorman tariff bill that was popular with the masses, the income tax on the wealthy, was struck by a 5-4 vote as being unconstitutional.
Perhaps history will repeat itself.
It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.Calvin Coolidge
to kowalski the Cleveland Presidency did not cost the Ds
pilgrim Thursday, November 12th at 11:57AM EST (link)What costs the Democrats was their decision to oppose Cleveland, and instead align themselves with “progressives” like William Jennings Bryan and Eugene Debs.
It is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man.Calvin Coolidge
Imagine all the bad legislation we could repeal
redpens Thursday, November 12th at 4:36PM EST (link)if 1894 comes back in 2010. Gun control laws, CRA, re-draw Congressional districts the way the Founding Fathers meant them to be, abolish the EPA, FCC, FTC, IRS, think of all the billions we’d save annually if we de-funded all those agencies not mandated by the Constitution.
However, Republicans Had the Chance To Do All That Recently
Ausonius Thursday, November 12th at 4:45PM EST (link)and choked on political correctness, D.C.-itis, fear of the MSM, whatever you want to blame.
Perhaps having C o n s e r v a t i v e Republicans in the W. Bush Congress would have made a difference.
But recall that even Reagan could not kill the monstrous Department of Education: to be sure, he did not have a Republican Congress, Conservative or otherwise.