I assume you remember when Newt Gingrich’s Republicans shut the government down in 1995. They thought they had some giant mandate from the people to gut the federal government and really stick it to the poor, but it turned out that they didn’t. They’d only been swept into office to bring about some nebulous idea of change. People wanted less corruption, more transparency. They were concerned about deficit spending and government waste, but they wanted their representatives to use a scalpel, not a meat cleaver. The President forced the Republicans to blink, and from that moment on his reelection was assured.
You might not remember the aborted coup attempt against Gingrich that took place in July 1997. The Republicans had lost nine seats in the 1996 elections, and a lot of the survivors blamed the loss on the government shutdown and Gingrich’s poor leadership. He had been embroiled in ethics scandals and had only been reelected as Speaker by a 216-205 vote. Shortly thereafter the full House voted 395-28 to reprimand Gingrich for his ethics violations and make him pay a staggering $300,000 fine.
So, Gingrich was definitely on probation as he went about setting the agenda for the 105th Congress. And then he made a gigantic mistake. There had been a lot of flooding in the Midwest during the winter of 1996-97, and the government had used up all the money they had appropriated for disaster relief. They needed to refill the coffers, and they figured that President Clinton would feel compelled to sign any disaster relief supplemental that they put forward. It was a perfect time to tack some otherwise objectionable material onto a must-pass bill. The Republicans didn’t want the Commerce Department to use a sampling technique in the census to help account for the underreporting of black and latino citizens. They made that technique illegal. The other thing the did was to make a provision that would avoid a government shutdown if the president and Congress were ever to reach an impasse on the budget again in the future.
Much to their surprise, Clinton vetoed that disaster relief and blamed the Republicans for playing politics. When Gingrich quickly caved, the Republicans had a revolt. For a time it looked like Dick Armey or Jim Paxson might replace Gingrich in a coup. But, when Armey realized he was unlikely to win that battle, he betrayed the coup-plotters to Newt, and the whole thing got shut-down.
The reason I bring this up is that it reminds us that this problem the Republicans have with optics has been there from the beginning of their 1994 Revolution. They listen to their most rabid partisans and convince themselves that they are pursuing popular policies. They think they will get rewarded for shutting down the government, or impeaching the president, or privatizing Social Security, or denying people unemployment insurance, or blocking health care reform. But it never happens.
For a while, the Republicans treaded water. They maintained just enough support to control Congress. In 2001, they lost the Senate during the summer before the terrorist attacks. Then they got a four year reprieve as the nation lurched to the right in response to those attacks. But the nation has never agreed with the Gingrichites. They never had a true mandate to do anything. And, yet, they still act like they have a mandate to push their totally discredited ideology.
