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Until 1994, Democrats had controlled the House for 40 straight years. From 1955-1980, (25 years) Democrats controlled both the House and Senate.…To this day, the Republican Establishment is much happier in the minority. In Nov. 2018, the GOP left 38 U.S. House races empty, no Republican on the ballot. Only 3 races lacked a Democrat candidate.
11/9/1994, NY Times on GOP winning Senate and on the way to winning House: “The gains were the Republicans’ strongest in decades.…Republicans, who have held the Senate in only 6 of the last 40 years, were particularly overjoyed that they had picked up Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Michigan and Maine.”
Wow, scary Time, Rush Limbaugh cover, Jan. 23, 1995. “Talk radio is only the beginning. Electronic populism threatens to short-circuit representative democracy.” (Time spins scary “conspiracy theory” about a daytime AM radio host, complete with smoke curling around the nostrils.)
Politico on Nov. 1994 election: “No Republican incumbent lost in the [1994] midterm election. [Democrat Tom] Foley became the first speaker to fail to win reelection since the Civil War. Other major upsets included the defeat of such powerful long-serving representatives as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Texas). In all, 34 incumbent Democrats were defeated, although several of them, including Reps. David Price (N.C.), Ted Strickland (Ohio) and Jay Inslee (Wash.), regained seats in subsequent contests. Evangelicals played a major role in the massive swing toward the Republicans.”…
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Added: 2/17/21, Gingrich: “”Without Rush, I doubt if we would have won control of the House in 1994, because he clarified the issues," Gingrich explained. “He gave our candidates arguments to run on. He created a huge number of people—his impact was more than the 20 million listeners a week, it was all of the people they would go talk to….He was also willing to talk about House Republicans” at time when they had not held the House in more than four decades.”
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But the GOP was eager to start losing again, couldn’t hide that they liked same things democrats liked, failed to deliver on big promises, and were generally arrogant assholes.
They prefer the minority, where they can hide the fact that they
actually agree with Democrats on major issues such as open borders.
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5/20/2005, “Loosening the rules,” USA Today
“Republicans captured a majority in the House of Representatives in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic rule. They quickly ushered through a number of rules changes. Since then, some of the restrictions have been eased or eliminated.
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Then
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Now
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Eight-year term limit for speaker of the House.
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No term limit.
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Six-year term limit for committee chairs.
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Rule waived for current chairman of Intelligence Committee.
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No gifts from lobbyists.
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$50 limit. Exception: meals delivered to members’ offices.
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No travel paid by outside groups.
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Charitable organizations can pay for travel to charitable events.
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No compensation for professional services.
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Doctors and dentists can earn an additional $22,500.
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Source: USA TODAY research
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““Now they’ve decided the ways Democrats were doing things when we were in control is OK,“ he says. “They want the perks back. The revolution has grown old.””
Jan. 19, 2003, “Republican Revolution fades,” USA Today, Andrea Stone
“House Republicans have grown less enamored with term limits. They have reversed some ethics reforms and rules aimed at budget discipline. Their leaders have tightened their grip on power.
As they begin their fifth two-year congressional session in control of the House, some of the practices Republicans attacked in 1994 after 40 years of Democratic rule don’t seem so bad after all. (Related item: Loosening the rules)
“Republicans have gone native,” says Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist. “They’ve got a raging case of Potomac Fever. Having won the battle, they don’t want to relinquish power.”
The clearest example of that came in the opening moments of the 108th Congress earlier this month [Jan. 2003]. House Republicans forced through nearly 30 rules changes, many of which eased tight restrictions they imposed on themselves in 1994. Among the casualties was the eight-year limit imposed on the House speaker when Newt Gingrich, the revolution’s leader, held the job. Now, House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois can serve indefinitely.
Longtime Congress-watchers aren’t surprised that Republicans are doing things they once condemned. “They are coming around to the realization that that’s what majorities do,“ says Norman Ornstein, a congressional expert at the American Enterprise Institute. “They were naïve.”
Many of the original revolutionaries who authored the GOP’s “Contract with America” platform in 1994, including Gingrich and his top deputy, Dick Armey, have left office. Gingrich could not be reached for comment. Those who remain feel empowered by last November’s election, when Republicans won a Senate majority and widened their House edge.
“It’s hard to continue to revolt when you’re in charge,” says Rep. Deborah Pryce of Ohio, head of the House Republican Conference.
Signs the revolution is over:
*Term limits. Many of the Republicans elected in 1994 pledged to limit their time in office, most often to six years. But they failed to pass a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms, and in recent years many Republicans have discarded the notion that the country needs “citizen lawmakers.”
At least 10 current House Republicans have reneged on term-limit pledges. Among them: George Nethercutt of Washington state, who unseated Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash., with a vow to limit himself to three terms. Nethercutt is now in his fifth term….
The limit on committee chairs remains. Still, leaders made an exception for Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., who was allowed to continue as head of the intelligence panel beyond his six-year limit.
Ethics rules. Strict ethics rules imposed in 1995 have been eased. A new, so-called pizza rule makes it easier for lobbyists to deliver food to congressional offices. It gets around a $50 gift limit set by Republicans five years ago, when they relaxed an earlier rule forbidding all gifts, by allocating the value of the food against the gift limits of all who eat it. A second change reverses a 1995 rule that discouraged lawmakers from attending charitable events at resorts. Republicans had assailed those trips as free vacations. Junkets that lobbyists pay for are still forbidden [as of Jan. 2003]….
Matt Keller, legislative director of the watchdog group Common Cause, disagrees. He predicts the rules changes will presage other Republican moves to loosen ethics rules and consolidate power. “They’ve been chomping at the bit,” he says. “You’re going to see extreme arrogance on display…the same thing that brought down the Democrats.”
Pryce calls the changes “fine-tuning” but agrees they could be seen as hypocritical. “Some might say lessons have been learned,” she says. “Not all the things (the Democrats) did was wrong.”
Among them, apparently, are rules that make it harder for the minority party to propose alternative legislation or move its own bills through the House. The new rules include a series of arcane changes that will strengthen the majority party’s power to control the policy agenda.
*Balanced budget. Republicans cited an “out-of-control” Democratic-led Congress in their 1995 call for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. But the war on terrorism and President Bush’s deep tax cuts have silenced the GOP on the issue of deficit spending.
Last week, Republicans reinstated a rule scrapped in 2001, when the federal government was running a budget surplus. The rule allows the House to raise the limit on the $6.4 trillion public debt without holding a separate, and potentially embarrassing, vote.
“We find ourselves in very unusual times. A time of war, a recession,” Pryce says. “There was a decision to take that one back.”
Rep. Martin Frost of Texas, the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee, says he knows why. “Now they’ve decided the ways Democrats were doing things when we were in control is OK,” he says. “They want the perks back. The revolution has grown old.””
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