On November 2nd, 1954, the Democrats won 19 seats in the House and two seats in the Senate to win back control of both chambers of Congress. It might not have been a shellacking, but it ended the Republican Party’s brief respite from congressional oblivion. In the years between 1933 and 1994, the GOP controlled the House only in the years 1947-1948 and 1953-1954. In those same years, the GOP only controlled the Senate in 1947-1948, 1953-1954, and 1981-1986. President Eisenhower’s honeymoon was over. Six days later, on November 8th, 1954, the president wrote a letter to his brother, Edgar. It read, in part:
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
It should be remembered that the Democrats at the time were dominated by Southern segregationists. To give you a flavor of what I am talking about, the week before, the following Democratic senators were reelected without even facing a Republican opponent: John L. McClellan of Arkansas, Richard Russell, Jr. of Georgia, Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana, James O. Eastland of Mississippi, and Sam Ervin of North Carolina. John Sparkman of Alabama and Lyndon Johnson of Texas were reelected with over 80% of the vote.
The politics of the country were quite a bit different back then than they are today, and being culturally or socially conservative did not necessarily mean that someone would also be economically conservative. As a result, economically conservative Republicans were easy to dismiss as “stupid.” But that tiny, stupid, splinter group grew and grew until it took over the central nervous system of the modern Republican Party. They never stopped trying to “abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws.”
So, forgive me if I am not willing to join Brian Beutler in declaring the ObamaCare Repeal Movement dead and buried. Health care repeal is part of the conservative Republicans’ DNA, just like repeal of Social Security always has been, and it may go into a period of dormancy, but it will be decades before it goes away completely.