The GOP's Tuesday Night Massacre

It took the Republicans almost six years to learn what should have been obvious: you can't govern from one extreme or the other.

Twelve years after assuming control of both houses of Congress, and five years and nearly 10 months after the inauguration of George W. Bush as President, the GOP decisively lost control of the House and the Senate. As of this writing, the Democrats have a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives, and a two-seat majority in the Senate, pending official confirmation of James Webb's victory over George Allen in Virginia.

Although for 40-something years to 1994 the Democrats held both houses, there were relatively few times when they also controlled the Presidency. And even in those times when they did, they tended to govern from the center. Even after the "Reagan Revolution," the Dems still had the congress, and the country didn't seem to be all that bad for it. Americans, it seems, like their government to be split among the parties.

Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" started a change, taking both houses in a historic election in 1994. But something happened on the way to conservatism. In 2000, with the election of Bush the Younger, Republicans suddenly controlled both the legislative and executive branches and had a shot at completely remaking the judicial. As we have seen in these last few years, the GOP is the governing equivalent of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players.

When a conscious effort is made to shut out the other party in legislation, as soon-t0-be ex-Speaker Hastert has done with his insistence on only allowing bills with the backing of the full Republican Caucus to make it to the floor, and blatantly accuse the minority party of near-treason and questioning their patriotism (Max Cleland 2002, John Kerry 2004, every Democrat in 2006), eventually people will be mad as hell and they aren't going to take it anymore. Democrats found this out to their peril in 1994 over issues of corruption.

Alas, some of the more erudite conservative pundits saw this coming, and it would do the GOP well to find out what they did wrong, should they ever have hope of controlling the legislature again.