About the history of party control of Congress and the presidency
As part of the discussion of Gaetz’s move yesterday, commenter “Sharon W” wrote (I’m pretty sure sarcastically):
Maybe Art Deco can enunciate for us all the gains conservatives experienced when the House, Senate and Presidency were in Republican hands.
Most people on the right – and I include myself – share some of that bitterness and frustration about how little was ever accomplished when “the House, Senate, and presidency were in Republican hands.” The anger is understandable, and it’s a large part of what is behind much of the support for Gaetz’s move.
But I think it’s also instructive to look back at the actual figures about Republican control, something I did in this post I wrote shortly before Trump – and a Republican Congress – took office. Please take a look. You may be surprised at how seldom since the days of Coolidge and Hoover that such a situation – the GOP controlling both houses and the presidency – existed. Here are a few excerpts:
If you study Congressional history in terms of party control (see this important chart), you will note that, ever since Coolidge and Hoover, Republicans have only had that “offense” opportunity (control of the presidency and both houses) twice. The first time (and then they barely had control) was in 1953-1955 under Eisenhower. That was a long long time ago, I think you would agree, and Eisenhower wasn’t exactly a conservative. Also, the reason I wrote “barely” is that the GOP’s “control” of the Senate balanced on a razor’s edge, with 48 Republicans to 47 Democrats plus one Independent (the Independent being Wayne Morse, who basically was no Republican).
The second time was much more recently, and it’s the one most present-day readers remember: under George W. Bush, and in particular the years 2005-2007. He also had majorities in 2003-2005, but a much weaker one (especially in the Senate), so weak it could be undermined by just a couple of senatorial RINOs. Those Bush years were also dominated by the war in Iraq, and unfortunately Republicans did not capitalize on their very rare moment of being in control and thus able to play “offense.”
That rankles, I know, and it does with me as well.
But I think it’s wrong to pretend there’s some long history of Republicans being in control and not taking advantage of it. I’ve just recounted the sum total of times Republicans have been in control of Congress and the presidency since the days of Hoover. What’s more, it’s actually the Democrats who’ve been in control of both far far more often ever since FDR, and therefore able to play real “offense” in the sense I’m talking about.
In addition, many times that the Democrats have held presidency and Congress, their majorities in both houses have been overwhelming, featuring numbers that Republicans haven’t rivaled since before FDR and have not come close to rivaling after (even during the Bush years when they did have control for a few years). All of the presidents in my lifetime whose party has held both houses at any time during their presidency (other than the aforementioned George W. Bush and briefly and weakly Eisenhower) were Democrats. All the ones who had very strong majorities for much of the time were Democrats as well. Besides FDR, we have Truman, JFK, LBJ, Carter, and early Clinton,. Actually, Clinton was the only post-FDR Democratic president who had to face a divided Congress for a substantial (at least half) portion of his presidency. The only one.
Check out the numbers; it’s quite astounding how large the Democratic margins in Congress were during the last two-thirds of the 20th Century. As an example, from 1935-1937 the Senate was about 72% Democratic and the House 74% under FDR, and those margins increased in 1937-1939 to 78% and 76%. Hard to see what Republicans could have done against that. During 1945-1947, Truman’s Congress was very close to 60% Democrat in the Senate and about 56% Democrat in the House (for the next two years he had to deal with a Republican Congress, however). JFK? 64% of the Senate was Democratic during his first two years, and that margin increased to 67% for the next two years (some of which, of course, became the LBJ years). At the same time, the House was 60% and 59% Democratic. The margins increased still again during LBJ’s first elected term, 1965-1967, to about 68% in both branches of Congress.
In contrast, Nixon (and then Ford) had to deal with an enormous Democratic majority of around 58% for both branches (although the margins reduced somewhat during the later years of his/their terms) the whole time he was in office. Carter was initially given a 61% lead in the Senate and almost 67% of the House, later reduced to a still-strong 57%/64%.
I’m doing all this math very quickly, so you might find errors, but that’s what I get when I try to figure it out.
Study it all you want, but you won’t find margins anything like that—not even remotely like that—for any Republican president since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, and Coolidge. And Coolidge only had 53% of the Senate and approximately 52% of the House at first, which went up a bit in the next election before it went down in the subsequent one, with the Senate Republican lead in the Senate fading to one vote. With Hoover, the Senate went back up to 58% GOP (then down again to a one-vote margin during the last two years of his term), while the House was 61% Republican and then down to a tie during those last two years.
So, that was the situation for Republicans controlling the presidency and Congress during the 20th Century, except for the aforementioned brief times during the Eisenhower years when they barely controlled Congress. And then in the 21st Century, more slight control for the GOP under Bush.
What a contrast! For nearly a hundred years Congress has mostly been in control of Democrats, often very strongly in control, and that’s also been when there’s a Democratic president. Republican control has been weak and extremely sporadic, and therefore most Republican presidents have faced an oppositional Congress.
What happened since I wrote that post? GOP control of both houses of Congress and the presidency only lasted for the first two years of Trump’s term, because in the midterms the control of the House flipped back to the Democrats. What’s more, even during those first two years, the GOP control of the Senate was balanced on a knife-edge, and that meant that just a couple of people such as John McCain sabotaged some of what the GOP was trying to do. During those first two years, there actually were two government shutdowns, but not much was accomplished by that means or by any other means except several SCOTUS appointments. So that short two year period is another cause for anger on the right, and yet government shutdowns didn’t do any good and may actually have helped lead to the Democrats gaining control of the House in the midterms.
I don’t have an answer as to what should be done at this point to improve things. But I think we need to be realistic about the problem, which includes the fact that the GOP has never – since Hoover’s first term – had the kind of definitive majority control numbers the Democrats regularly had, almost never had control of the legislative and executive branch at the same time, and the GOP doesn’t have that kind of control now.
the GOP doesn’t have that kind of control now.
Indisputably true. Also indisputably true is that the GOP has an absolute veto on all spending and legislation. And a plurality of them, led by McCarthy, decided to work with the Dems to stick us with $2 trillion, when they could have done absolutely nothing and made that number $0….
There’s really no way to sweep that under the rug. If the GOP doesn’t start using its veto on spending, interest payments will eventually do it for them. We’re all going to like that a lot less, and it won’t matter who the Speaker was or who voted for what….
Melisande:
How did the two government shutdowns work out in the first half of Trump’s term? Shutdowns are how that veto works if the GOP controls only the House. They don’t seem to have the effect one would hope.
And if there weren’t enough GOP votes in this Congress for such a shutdown – because, after all, another reality is that the conservatives in the House are only a portion of the GOP members there – then how does a shutdown happen? And if it were to happen, how does it not work to cause a backlash that returns the House to Democrat control in the next election cycle? That seems to be what occurred during Trump’s presidency.
I’m all for fiscal conservatism. But without stronger GOP and conservative majority control of the Congress, I don’t see it succeeding. That’s my Sancho Panza-esque take on it.
The GOP will find itself unable to get a majority in the House before too much longer given the spread of mail-in-voting and mass immigration, so it is all a moot point any way. All of this is just whistling through the graveyard. I suspect that if the GOP could even hold together a majority to shut the government down until the Democrats came to the table to discuss a real fiscal reform, Biden or any Democrat President would simply bypass Congress and spend without Congressional approval and tell SCOTUS to stuff it. At this point, such an outcome, no matter how awful, would be clarifying and we could then dispense with the belief we are voting our way out of this.
Yancey Ward:
Then Gaetz shouldn’t have bothered, if all is lost anyway.
I also am pessimistic, but not quite as pessimistic as you. If I became that pessimistic, I’d probably stop writing about politics at all.
It isn’t pessimism, Neo- it is realism. Under the old election system as it existed prior to 2018, the GOP should have won at least a 25 seat majority in the House and retaken control of the Senate last Fall. However, with mail-in-voting, the GOP only managed a 4 seat majority. It will be worse next year- the GOP is all but certain to lose control of the House again and I give them little chance of even getting a 50/50 Senate. There is no chance of winning the Presidential election.
The time is coming when one has to choose whether or not they will continue to give tacit approval to this by participating in the facade of voting. If nothing changes after next year’s election, then I am done with electoral politics in this country- I will no longer willingly participate in this fraudulent system.
those are the structural realities, that yancey is pointing out,
btw, what remains of what the gop put in place in the 90s, I would be hard pressed to think of something, whereas the Dems push insane policies which are not reversed,
is it Mail in Ballots or Ballot Harvesting? To blame poor showing on Mail in Ballots is not the answer. Maybe field better candidates, read the electorate better, do some Harvesting. I think the Ranked Voting is much more dangerous than Mail in’s.
If you want to mark the precise moment the Republicrats lost their mojo, it happened when the sainted Buckley kicked the Birchers out of the party. He broke the tip of the spear and it’s taken the Republicrats 60 years to get some fighting spirit back.
Frequent reader, rare commenter. And not as informed politically as some of you. The division of opinion within this blog’s comment section about the ouster of McCarthy and what it means to the Republican party’s future has left me quite despondent. I have always thought we were mostly on the same side (there have been some opposing views trying to rile us up, but the majority always silenced those opinions in the past.). The hostility of the comments and tone have been startling. Sometimes I feel lucky to be on the other side of sixty because I have no idea where this country is going,
SHIREHOME – Republicans in California won’t allow their ballots to be harvested. The state party tried it, and it failed because the voters were reluctant to hand their ballots over to strangers coming to their door to collect their ballots.
The Republican answer was to set up drop boxes in places frequented by Republican voters. The Democrats, predictably, sued (and lost).
In any case, my suspicion is that the real problem isn’t ballot harvesting per se (though it probably isn’t helping, since Democrats appear to generally be less likely to vote on Election Day). It’s the fraud that’s almost certainly being hidden behind the “harvested” ballots.
“(there have been some opposing views trying to rile us up, but the majority always silenced those opinions in the past.).” Jeanbean
“…trying to rile us up”? Majority silencing opposing opinions? Neo has described this blog as a “salon” where important things can be discussed. The opposing opinions expressed here, by Melisande, for instance and Geoffrey Britain when it came to Ukraine/Russia war strike me as very respectful. Some of the responses to those holding the majority opinion cross the line, but I guess that is to be expected. What is depressing is the state of affairs in this country. I’m in Los Angeles and believe me we are already living in the absence of “rule of law”, on the street and in the business realm. I pray for a miracle because we are not voting ourselves out of this in California, mail-in ballot or not.
Sharon W:
I feel for you in California. I still visit there regularly – seeing relatives and friends – and I’ve seen the changes over the years. A self-inflicted wound by the Democrats who are utterly in charge.
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) offers a clear explanation for why he voted for McCarthy’s ouster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE6bv9t46tg
I find it persuasive. For those who do not I would ask; how is opposing the ouster of a House Speaker who has repeatedly broken his word and, when all is said and done… goes along with a party intent upon the destruction of the Constitution that he has sworn an oath to support NOT an example of Einstein’s maxim? “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
The Republican party could learn something from Neo’s history lesson about majorities.
The Gingrich Revolution is an example. Pick a few – probably less than seven – issues that Republicans can unite around. Promise to deliver on those issues and then in the next cycle pick a few more issues and deliver on them.
Republicans are individualistic, but the elected office holders need to pledge to work within the party and above all, stay united. Great strategists know that a small or partial victory is better than losing a battle because you can’t achieve the exact goal you wanted.
I liken politics to football. A lot of football is grinding out small gains and moving the ball toward the goal line. When your opponent is nearly as strong as you, you will not make the gains you want, but by staying united and working together, you can still win in the end.
The Democrats know their ideas aren’t widely popular but know they can force them on the citizenry by staying united – it’s their secret sauce. That, and election fraud.
The Republicans will never achieve the goals of fiscal sanity, an improved economy, a strong defense, and many other conservative goals unless they realis they’re all on the same team and work together.
The framers of the Constitution intended for the House to be “first among equals” among the 3 branches. But they lived in a time, in a nation, in which the population was predominantly rural. They never imagined that cities would get so enormous and that their populations would trend Democratic. The explanation for the latter phenomenon is really quite simple and I don’t think we need to go there. It is what it is, and it’s going to get worse — the Dems are seeing to that. I’ve read today that Chicago is “receiving” at least 10 busloads per day of illegal Central/South American migrants. Just this past week I’ve begun to see, on my commute from Indiana to the South Side, migrants panhandling with signs on street corners on 55th by the off-ramps from I-94. This is in one of the worst and most violent neighborhoods in North America, Englewood. I wonder how that’s going to go down with the homies. In any case, when the Democrat overlords who control Illinois decide to give illegals the right vote, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that they’ll vote Democratic.
Geoffrey Britain:
Well, Good is certainly an optimist. I certainly hope it works out the way he describes it.
I don’t think anyone here fails to understand what was wrong with McCarthy. That really isn’t the issue. The issue is that it seems that the group of eight broke the eggs hoping to make an omelet, but they don’t seem to have the recipe for the omelet except for hope. Good thinks they’ll come together, because they “have to”? Since when did it work out that way? He needs to hear what the other Republicans have to say? The group of eight didn’t check it out beforehand? Seems like a wing and a prayer to me.
Again, I hope his optimism is justified.
…Einstein’s maxim? … “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Geoffrey Britain:
Cite? So far as I know, Einstein did not say that. It’s always hit my ear as a silly thing to say.
People do the same thing over and over for many reasons. Mostly they are not insane.
Sometimes one has to do the same thing over and over and failing before one can get a different result.
Ask the guy here who is learning French.
Here’s a fun balloon-popper:
____________________________
No, Albert Einstein didn’t say this phrase. My source says insanity might be crediting that quote to Einstein over and over again. 🙂
–Betsy Sullivan
https://www.quora.com/Did-Einstein-really-define-insanity-as-doing-the-same-thing-over-and-over-again-and-expecting-different-results
There’s an old saying that the Germans of yore — a joke by Germans, if you can feature that — would tell to illuminate the cultural divide between northern and southern Germans. To wit: “In Berlin, when times are bad, they say ‘the situation is desperate but not hopeless”; in Vienna, they say “the situation is hopeless but not desperate.'”
I subscribe to the latter view. I’m pessimistic but I don’t see where any good can come from desperation, in the northern German sense. There’s very little I can do to affect the flow of history. Instead, I’ll take the advice of the dying Buddha to one of his disciples: “Be thou a lamp unto theyself, O Ananda. Rely on yourself and do not rely on external help, holding fast to the truth as a lamp. Seek salvation alone in the truth, and do not look for assistance to anyone besides yourself.”
The important question now that this has happened is who will take the House leadership, and will he (presumably) succeed? There were always personality and other issues surrounding McCarthy, who was a somewhat better Speaker than I thought he might be.
The stated reason for the Gaetz-led rebellion was a return to passing appropriations bills one by one and then negotiating with the Senate for final passage. A new Speaker should certainly have this as a goal, and if he puts his mind and energy into it, it could be done.
Who controls the Senate? Democrats. The House was all the Republicans had.
Scorpions.
…in Vienna, they say “the situation is hopeless but not desperate.’”
IrishOtter49:
Wonderful! I’m of that mind myself.
___________________________________
Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.
–Shunryu Suzuki (Founder of the San Francisco Zen Center)
And for the record, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I don’t have the time and Art Deco seems particularly adept at presenting such information. I do learn a lot here.
Sharon W:
The reason I thought sarcasm was a good possibility was because so many people often say that, even when the GOP had both houses and the presidency, it didn’t accomplish anything.
It’s true that Art Deco seems to tap into some vast storehouse of information, especially information about the workings of government.
Well, I read here, and elsewhere, that McCarthy’s great sin was that he “lied” about a return to regular order. Strangely, the same people do not charge Trump with lying about the promises he failed to deliver on. I do not minimize the obstacles Trump faced; but he did have four years, while McCarthy had about 8 months–and his own obstacles.
The other thing that bothers me is this term “regular order”. I thought I had a fair understanding of how government works–having majored in associated subjects. My understanding of regular order in the budgeting process is that appropriate committee(s) write appropriations bills that are offered to the Speaker to bring to the floor for debate and vote. No bills no regular order. So, did I miss something? Did McCarthy out of some perverse, and self destructive, motive refuse to bring all of those timely and suitably drafted bills to the floor?
My understanding is that faced with a deadline, and no appropriations bills, McCarthy crafted a compromise that cut spending, while providing additional funds for border security. Being a compromise, it made some concessions. The eight did not support it, and the Senate killed it. Surprise.
True, there is an emotional appeal to a shutdown; I share it. But, there is intellectual opposition. No one can believe that the Democrats, aided by their media cabal, would not pin the blame on the GOP; and that Biden would not make a shutdown as painful as he possibly could.
Sadly, the American electorate are addicted to, and dependent on, big government. That addiction started with FDR, and has grown throughout the years. There is no appetite, no tolerance, for austerity on any scale. It will take a climatic event such as a severe recession, or even a depression, to break the addiction. In any case anyone who leaves finger prints will pay a big price. So, shut it down, and in 2024, goodbye House, goodbye Senate, goodbye White House. In my opinion the future of the two party system, or what currently passes for one, is at stake in that election. Some day someone might think to ask McCarthy if that were on his mind.
Well, this act is ended. We will see how the next act unfolds. In the mean time it would be nice if thought preceded rhetoric.
It’s true that Art Deco seems to tap into some vast storehouse of information, especially information about the workings of government.
–neo
It would be nice if AD shared his sources, so we might inspect his reasoning.
Perhaps it’s smart that he doesn’t.
Most folks don’t post sources, just sayin’
Most folks don’t post sources, just sayin’
om:
I do. neo does. Others sometimes. For the specific stuff.
It’s not that hard.
Geoffrey Britain at 7:16 pm
Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) offers a clear explanation for why he voted for McCarthy’s ouster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE6bv9t46tg
I also found it persuasive.
That was a reasonable explanation of why conservative House members could no longer work with Speaker McCarthy.
huxley:.
Oh, next time you comment on anything like government or tax policy it will be interesting. Comparing yourself as a comentor to neo is a bit of a stretch regarding sources. Your beef with Art many times is personal and flares up from time to time.
I guess I’m more pessimistic than Yancey Ward.
It seems in 2022 the Gop deliberately sabotaged getting a majority in the house and senate, and the house majority was more of a fluke. It seems it was more important to defeat maga candidates, than win a majority.
States, including Pa now are pushing automatic voter registration for interactions with lots of government agencies, not just automobile licenses.
Fills voter rolls and it’s possible the person won’t know it I am told.
Any automated vote mail outs will have hundreds of thousands going into the country and no one to get them due to moving or fake addresses.
I never believed Einstein made that remark about insanity. It’s not even true or reasonable as a generalization. Learning a musical instrument, for instance, requires doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a gradual improvement in result.
The demokrats seem to stick together much better than the dumbpublicans; the former are not as prone to sabotaging their own leaders (and their policies) as are the latter.
One would think this has a significant effect on the ability of the dumbpublicans to get things done.
Also, the dems seem far better than the dumbpublicans at political hardball.
Neo said it best;
” Republicans did not capitalize on their very rare moment of being in control and thus able to play “offense.”
Or more generally, the dumbpublicans seem incapable of playing offense regardless of their majority.
They are the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of politics ( but Clouseau – played by Peter Sellers – always solved the murder, albeit always by accident and via an amazing sequence of coincidences ).
Which reminds me; I believe it was in one of the Pink Panther flicks in which one of the characters asked, ” how did they get the body to fall within the chalk outline.”
Well, the democrats have figured out how, but the dumbpublicans can’t even find the body.
JohnTyler:
So I guess there isn’t a Uniparty after all.
Here in MT. We had a steady run of all democratic control for about 12 (16?) years. The R.s finally got a bit of a majority in 2016 and voted for Trump. Then in 2018 things started looking a little better and finally in 2020 they won all three. During the years 2016-2018 the R.s tried desperately hard to “make friends”, to “work across the aisle”. With that hope they gave millions of dollars of new salary money to state employees and school teachers as part of small political achievements. Of course, by then all state employees were Democrats–still are.
Up until several years ago we were a state of just under a million population. What do you think has happened in this state since it turned Red? The Dems who still controlled all government agencies and the schools used those increased salaries to bring in hundreds more employees from places like Seattle and Chicago. They did not hire our own kids who graduated from our own colleges. Thousands also moved in from Minneapolis due to the destroy the city policy there–how many of them are going to vote Republican do you think?
Our legislature meets every other year for about 4 months. Our last session was the January to April session of this year when we had full control. Guess what happened? The Republican Party went viral all out with “no abortion” policy. Yeah baby that’s the one that always wins (sarcasm). They did try with two different bills to get Charter schools approved but that is still in front of some D judge, who was put in place by the Dems long ago. BTW all of our judges came into being during the D years–how many bills that were passed by a R controlled government are getting past those judges do you think? NONE–ZIP.
The Democrats have a new way of supporting young attorneys. You graduate from the only law school which is located in a very liberal college, pass the bar exam, and then…and then the democratic party connects you to a “donor”. You and a couple of your friends form a Non-Profit like the ACLU and this “donor” funds your work to attack one particular new bill in the already rigged (staffed?) court system. WE the people have elected and then passed multiple new bills which have all ended up being contested in the court system by newly graduated attorneys who are being paid by out of state donors.
Now, here is the BEST PART! This is MONTANA. The most beautiful state on the continent. Guess what is happening now? Wellll. . . . the liberals are crying for “affordable housing”. You know for all those newly arrived liberals. Guess what the Republicans are doing? Jumping right in there to collaborate with huge building projects ripping up the agricultural land and the majestic view sheds. If it’s flat they want to build huge cheap building projects. It seems that supporting developers is the only way the Republicans can get their hands on cash.
I am quite certain that you asked anyone in this state if it would be ok to tear up the views in order to house illegal Mexicans I don’t think they would support that effort. But, they will support the builder’s union, and any other leftist that will ultimately take back control in the next election.
Do you want to know the capper on all this? While the R.s were in total control–I mean absolute control–there was a re-drafting of voting boundaries. Guess who lost that contest because they wanted to “be nice”? They could not even come out winners in the most important challenge they faced–re-districting.
There is no way in H they are ever again going to get total control. Especially now that they collaborated to create a new voting system. The all-mail-in system is the expected norm, though you could show up to drop your ballot in the box if it makes you feel like the system is clean. Oh, I am certain the liberals will “vet” someone who claims to be R and put them in the system to “look good”.
In 2018 we had evidence of multiple incidents of voter fraud, but couldn’t get one judge to take a look–not one.
If you want to keep Montana as it is call your friends in Seattle and tell them to stop their expansion program!
JeanBean –
Why does the vigorousness of the debate bother you? I could see we have a fairly united view of where we want to go, but, the problem is how do we get there. I don’t think we can get there because of the laziness and “where’s mine” attitude of the American voter. I put this squarely on them. Right now I don’t think we have a hope in hell unless there’s an uprising. Unfortunately the public is to fat to do that.
Thanks Anne.
I read something like Anne’s comment and while much of it is familiar, it really does seem like we are in the midst of a cold war. It is multi-pronged and very effective, and flies under the radar for most people. The democratic republic is effectively dead.
I never much liked Gingrich, but he was the most efffective and consequential Republican House leader in my lifetime, and possibly forever. The unimpressive record of the others is one reason I wasn’t hard on McCarthy. He wasn’t below average, and if he was only mediocre, others were worse.
Congress wasn’t as polarized in the post-WWII period as it was in the Gingrich-Pelosi era. Republicans could still count on picking up Democrat votes on some issues (and on losing some Republican votes to the Democrats on others). Maybe that should have made Republican leaders more effective than they were, but bear in mind: the big issues in the Cold War years were foreign and military policy (largely non-partisan) and civil rights (now considered a Democrat issue). Work that Republican leaders were able to do on those issues largely goes unnoticed today.
Paul Ryan looks to me to have been disastrous. I wouldn’t expect an outsider like Trump to make much headway in Congress. More could have been achieved if he’d had a Speaker who took his side, rather than worked against him. McConnell was bad enough. The lack of more serious restraints on the deficit was particularly bad.
Anne, what fraction of your new arrivals over the last two decades were attracted to MT by the stereotype of it being a “high liberty” oriented state? Cowboy mindset, etc.? Can you say anything about a similar occurrence (or different result) in neighboring Idaho?
In Florida we have growth as well, fortunately as a mix of mostly red and some blue oriented folks. Beaches were always attracting development, but now the interior urban sites are also growing “relentlessly”.
Someone from Texas might comment on their views of growth in Texas? Also a mix? Same for Phoenix? Or in NM?
I wonder if those states with legislatures that meet only once every other year, or for short periods each year, have results influenced by that fact [i.e., not full time so they need another source of income]. Our full time national pols never stop “helping” us [or themselves]. Of course the resulting bureaucracies live forever at both levels.
“Who controls the Senate? Democrats. The House was all the Republicans had.”
If the applecart doesn’t deliver any apples, is it still an apple cart?
“Oh, no! Don’t upset the applecart, it’s all we have!”
At a certain point, don’t you have to wreck the thing that pretends to be an applecart so that you at least realize that you don’t have one and can begin to begin again?
Before we can get serious people seated, the unserious ones have to be unseated. The pretending has to end before we can even see the enormity of the problem.
A rebirth is needed.
Bear in mind that all of the ex-Confederate states were heavily Democratic from the Civil War until at least a hundred years later, making for an uneasy alliance within that party, since most of these southerners were much more socially conservative than liberal.
Another Pyro. Baby and bathwater to go with your rebirth theme.
I used had intentionally.
The Republicans, whom Pyros may loathe more than Democrats(?) have a tiny margin controlling the House. Nancy and her minions will gladly take that away. How’s them apples? Or just burn it all down?
Rep. Blue Balls doesn’t make the serious threshold, as he had no plan beyond his One Simple Trick; to vote with all the Democrats.
huxley and IrishOtter49,
Jordan Peterson put it very succinctly:
“Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
And it’s fatal.”
Why do people move to MT–VIEWS, WILDERNESS, OPEN SPACE, EASY ACCESS TO MILLIONS OF ACRES OF OUTDOOR EXPERIENCES. The vat majority of people who move here end up working far below their skills/education levels. They do no move here to play host to tourists who want to wading the ocean. WE HAVE SNOW. Last winter we had temperatures nearly -30f in some areas. Idaho’s wilderness, outdoor opportunity areas is much smaller than ours. When people think of Idaho the idea of liberty and guns comes to mind immediately. I do not believe that is what people are thinking about when they move here. Though we have the same laws and attitudes regarding guns. Our cowboys have always been a little more reserved and a little better educated!
P.S. FWIW I just got a third phone call from a Mexican/Spanish caller wanting to list my property. Interesting that my neighbor hires many illegal Mexican workers, so I am assuming the awareness of our property and these calls are coming from that illegal Mexican group! I the or anyone like him calls me again I will file a harassment claim with the Republican AG. The local DA won’t do anything he/she wants everyone else to give away what they have to make her/him feel good.
Or as Bugs Bunny put it: “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.”
“I’ve just recounted the sum total of times Republicans have been in control of Congress and the presidency since the days of Hoover.”
And I would submit that this is the very reason that when Trump had majorities in both houses of congress for the first two years of his presidency, those of us who put them there had a high expectation that they would take advantage of those majorities and do some of the things they’d been promising they were going to do for years….not the least of which was repeal Obamacare.
Yea, yea…I know…”what were they going to replace it with?”. In the words of the immortal Thomas Sowell “When the fire department puts out a house fire, what do they replace it with?”
But I digress.
A major reason that the GOP lost seats in the midterm two years into Trump’s Presidency is BECAUSE they did not fulfill their promises. They just expected us to keep electing them because…well…what other choice do we have right?
To add fuel to the fire, not only did they fail miserably to live up to their campaign promises, a goodly number of them were actively working to undermine the President that we elected so overwhelmingly, even the Democrat cheat machine couldn’t overcome the margin. So of course they lost control in the midterms, the base was so disheartened, a significant number didn’t even bother voting, or voted third party to avoid casting another ballot into the void of GOP broken promises.
And that’s what we’re still facing. The establishment GOP that would much prefer to be the minority party so they can feed at the trough while maintaining their plausible deniability “we can’t do anything because we’re in the minority”.
I’m not losing any sleep over “chaos” in the ranks of the party who refuse to do what they get elected do to and actively work to undermine a President of their own party who was duly elected by the people they are supposed to be representing.
Sailorcurt, I presume that you presume that Trump tried to work with Congress.
I am unaware of Trump ever trying to work with anyone. For instance, I am trying to recall a single former Cabinet Member who is currently on good terms with him. As I recall the first part of his Presidency was near chaos, as he took on one “best ever” cabinet member after another; e.g., SecDef, and then fired them. I am not convinced that the Executive Branch was ever stable enough to work on a coherent plan with the Congress. Although they did pass Trump’s much ballyhooed tax cuts. (Which I never noticed.)
Although it is common for a party to lose House seats in the first mid-term; it is inescapable that during Trump’s tenure the GOP lost the house.
It is certainly convenient, but also a stretch, to blame everything on the Congress; i.e., the Leadership. As we know, one over sized ego blames everyone but himself for everything. A certain percentage of people, but probably not enough to win in ’24, nod.
My recurring nightmare is President Gavin (Gruesome) Newsom.
Sailorcurt:
Do you recall what happened when the GOP attempted to repeal Obamcare during Trump’s first term? I do. In case you don’t, please read this.
Hi Neo, thanks for the reply, but I fail to grasp your point:
First of all, neither the measure that failed to pass the Senate, nor the version passed by the House, were repeals of Obamacare. They both repealed parts and left parts – tried to have their cake and eat it too.
That’s not what they promised they would do nor what we elected them to do.
Be that as it may:
“Note also that McCain wasn’t alone among Republicans in voting against the measure. Collins and Murkowski joined him. However, it was McCain’s vote that counted and was purposely dramatic. Had he voted “yes,” the tally would have been 50/50 and Pence could have broken the tie.”
In other words, three Republicans voted “no”. The party failed us even in their milquetoast version of sort of, kind of, partly fulfilling their promises to us. Yes, it was the Senate, not the house, but they still had those pesky “R”s after their names.
Trump was a breath of fresh air. I had my reservations about him during the campaign but when he took office, he defied logic and politics by actually trying to do what he said he was going to do. Wow, what a novel approach.
I’m not saying that I necessarily agree with voting third party or not voting in response to betrayal, but I can certainly understand where the people who did so were coming from. Sometimes politics comes down to supporting the lesser of two evils, but considering the way I was raised, I’m not going to condemn anyone who would prefer not to vote for any brand of evil.
And maybe a little chaos is just what’s needed to remind our “Representatives” what that word actually means.
One can hope anyway.