While perhaps not quite as dramatic as Newt's 1994 "Contract With America" stuff, the result will be profound.
Actually, if the GOP performs like I think it will, this election will DWARF 1994. First, the timeline from 1994 through the rest of the decade:
1. The election in 1994 was based upon an ATTEMPT by Clinton to foist "HillaryCare" on the American public. There were other factors, but this was the one event that led to Newt Gingrich's "Contract on America". Actually, Haley Barbour probably had a greater impact on the election itself, but Gingrich happened to be better positioned. I can elaborate more on that later.
2. Bill Clinton was a masterful politician, but he had the help of a relatively sycophant media, a lack of Internet accountability (rapid response), and once the election was over, he maneuvered his political apparatus. In addition, he took charge of the Democratic minority, and played the budget deficit card brilliantly, with the republicans flinching. Once this happened, the media jumped on this like a shark on a bloody prey, cementing the idea that the republicans were toothless in their majority.
3. With that failure, the conservative movement stalled and failed, Bob Dole, a WWII RINO, lost big. After this election, the left shifted to the left again. In fact, the Left became the first group to dominate the Internet (more on that later as well).
So yes, the GOP definitely has a negative track record, and has proven they can't govern effectively as a majority. Why should this time be different?
1. Obama has essentially done everything up front. He has fundamentally (and, hopefully, temporarily) changed the car companies, the financial instutions. He's passed ObamaCare, which is HillaryCare on steroids, and is now in the process of changing the energy industry. In short, he's played out every leftist orgasmic fantasy in only a year and a half.
2. The Tea Party movement is not just about anti-Obama, or pro-republican. It is about a FUNDAMENTAL REAWAKENING by many people about how the government is SUPPOSED to work. The Contract With America turned out to be more of a slogan and an election gimmick, as the crappy style of governance showed.
3. EVERY republican candidate that I've talked to has not only expressed a disdain to "politics as usual", many of them are also working to ensure that they take their Constitutional duties seriously. In short, they have a far more greater understanding about how the government is supposed to work. THIS IS KEY. In short, the feeling is that there is far less of individual desires to succeed politically, but to collectively work toward migrating controls from the federal level to the state level (other than for international and defense departments), and simultaneously, at the state levels, for controlling the finances at their levels that they will now have greater control for their constituents.
Yet, I believe this to be the most important election in my lifetime, surpassed perhaps only by the election of Ronald Reagan (who accelerated the end of the Cold War). This election will be about reestablishing the Constitutional framework of the legislative branch of government. Note that the dems are shifting to the left; so once we win, we will dominate the political scape for at least two years.
And one more point: President Obama is NO Bill Clinton. He doesn't control the political apparatus; the apparatus controls HIM. Obama is nothing more than a pouty, PR-type bureaucrat who, without the apparatus, is going to be floundering like a trout on a flat rock. He won't have the mainstream media to help him nearly as much as the '95 media helped Clinton. Even Clinton was a governor, so he had executive experience in dealing with opposition parties.
And this comes to what I said before: His new best friends will be Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown, and that's if they don't align themselves with the conservative majority. We should be able to deal with them if they don't.
Yes, this election will dwarf any Congressional election we've had since, perhaps, the New Deal era.
