Posted on 09/14/2009 5:57:45 PM PDT by neverdem
There are obvious parallels between Barack Obama’s push for health care reform and Bill Clinton’s ill-fated attempt 16 years ago. In both cases, an apparent legislative juggernaut hit a wall of public skepticism. Both presidents saw their poll numbers wilt in the summertime heat. Both White Houses staged a September address to Congress in an effort to regain the political initiative.
We know how the story turned out last time. Clinton’s popularity, temporarily boosted by his September speech, quickly sank again. Health care reform withered on the vine. Public anger with Washington boiled higher. And Newt Gingrich’s Congressional Republicans swept into power the following fall.
The long shadow of that 1994 drubbing helps explain why Democrats will probably end up passing something called “health care reform” before the year is out, the better to avoid their party’s Clinton-era fate.
But Frank Luntz, the pollster behind Gingrich’s Contract With America, thinks they may have the wrong early-1990s parallel in mind.
When I asked him about the lessons of 1994, Luntz — whose latest...
--snip--
But Luntz insisted that in the run-up to the ’94 election, “it wasn’t the health care debate that was driving the anger; it was the crime bill.”
That piece of legislation, which mixed stricter sentencing laws with more money for prison-building and more financing for police, was supposed to cement Clinton’s reputation as a tough-minded centrist.
Instead, the crime bill became a lightning rod for populist outrage. The price tag made it seem fiscally irresponsible. (Back then, $30 billion was real money.) The billions it lavished on crime prevention — like the infamous funding of “midnight basketball” — looked liked ineffective welfare spending. The gun-control provisions felt like liberalism-as-usual.
--snip--
But as long as the Republican Party is defined by its most juvenile ideologues (think Joe Wilson)...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ben Stein: Thank You, Barack Obama [For singlehandedly reviving the GOP]
It's not like the drive by media has been holding the President to account for his nonstop BS.
The NY Slimes is owned by the DNC.
even the slime is running out on them.
I remember the health care bill and how mad I was but I don’t remember the crime bill even after Lutz pointed it out.
Lutz is full of it IMHO.
Most people I know treated midnight basketball as a joke and waste of money but were livid against the takeover of healthcare.
He then goes on to say the outrage was over the crime bill's price tag, when it was really a ban on scary-looking guns that got everyone in a froth. That and socialist medicine, and both right before the 1994 mid-terms.
C-SPAN2 to show DC "FreedomWorks" 9/12/09 rally at 9:13pm ET *TONIGHT* 9/14/09
Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
The assault weapons ban was part of the 1994 crime bill.
Backlash to his gun control schemes was a huge part of the Nov. 94 election.
Clinton said the NRA "could rightly claim to have made Gingrich the House Speaker."
“the congressional check kiting scandal that brought the RATS down.”
YES! CORRECT! Good on you for remembering this. It was absolutely what did it.
And I think Rangel, et al may do for them again.
And the dems new trope of just INSULTING those folks they need to get votes from. That is not going to fly.
Rush & Mark Levin both said today that the next thing that needs to be done is to take back the Republican party. (I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist). Rush esp. was completely against any 3rd party concept, and I do agree with him.
The dems have got to be crushed, only the pubbies are big enough to do it.
They are right, we need to get the Republicans on the right track, and imho both Joe Wilson and Michale Steele can be a part of that.
Because the democrats and the MSM have abandoned all pretense of even being Americans, basically, and they have got to be driven from power, driven from office and thrown into the ash can of history.
There are definitely paralells to 1993 now. However, Obama’s approval ratings haven’t fallen to the level Clinton’s had, at least not yet.
For some 13 years (1993-2006), the parties’ were in a state of equilibrium, which was cracked in 2006 and broken in 2008. What we might be seeing is not a conservative realignment (though I hope for that), but simply a number of moderate independents and ultra-liberal Republicans returning to the Republican fold, and the equilibrium returning.
I started to pay attention to politics in 1994. My history teacher said when people vote for the same party for President in two straight elections, they are hooked for life. The stability of the partisan alignments from 1994-2004 reinforced that belief. After the 2005 Katrina, polls quickly moved to the Dem side. Blue states became bluer. Red states became purple. Dems were looking good in blue states. Longtime Republican incumbents looked endangered in what should be safe districts. 2006 was a learning experience for me. It taught me that these independents are quite fickle people. Partisan alignment can change if people feel that their lives are going in the wrong direction. The anti-Bush feelings independents had in 2008, have trickled down to Reid and Pelosi. The feelings are starting to flow to Obama.
Many years ago I was a registered Libertarian. I got tired of losing. A third party is like one of the generals in a battle deciding he does not like either side so he attacks both.
I remember it now — 1994 crime bill did not ring a bell but the assault weapons ban does. Thanks!
Democrats were the undisputed majority party from 1958 to 1992. Republicans briefly had the majority during 1994-1995, with 1994 being their best election since the post-World War II Republican landslide of 1946. A biased, hyper-critical press, combined with Clinton’s calculated move to the political center, brought the Democrats into a tie with Republicans. That tie essentially stayed until 2006, and Democrats became ascendent in 2008. You were right about Hurricane Katrina, combined with the Iraq War lasting longer than World War II and, to a lesse degree, concerns about the deficits. Independs are as fickle as you say, and the most liberal RINO’s in urban states briefly went to the ‘Rats.
The key has to do with what part of the country most of the swing is happening in? I don’t know at this point. If our comeback is most pronounced in the industrial midwest, it’s going to be a very good year. A comeback in New England & the Mid-Atlantic states would also help. But if it’s most pronounced in areas where we already are in the majority, it won’t boost us as much as we hope.
Thanks for the ping!
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