RETURN TO NORMALCY

The Peter Principles: The whole story (Peter Roff, 7/10/03, United Press International)

The political character of the nation could change profoundly as a result of next November's election. In 2004 it will be 10 years since the Republican Party, riding atop the crest of a wave created by the "Contract with America," rode into the majority in the U.S. House, the Senate, the governorships and, for the first time in decades, reached parity with the Democrats in the number of state legislative chambers the party held.

There have been ups and downs for the GOP in the decade since. In 1996 it failed to win the presidency. In 1998 the Republicans, though they held on to the majority, suffered an unexpected net loss of seats in the U.S. House that led Speaker Newt Gingrich to resign.

In 2000, George W. Bush won the White House by the narrowest of margins, taking the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to former Vice President Al Gore. The GOP also lost its working majority in the Senate, thanks in part to the victory of a dead man in Missouri. Later in the year, a defecting Republican became an independent, giving the plurality Democrats control in a left-of-center coalition.

Nevertheless the past 10 years have been the brightest for the Republicans since Calvin Coolidge was president. They have, after 40 years out of power in the U.S. House Representatives and contrary to most predictions, maintained their majority.

They have defied expectations and maintained their lead in the number of Republican governors in office across America. To be sure, swapping Pennsylvania's governor's mansion for Maryland's or Michigan's for Hawaii's is not an even trade but the party has shown surprising strength in unexpected areas. For example all the governors in New England, currently with New York the anchor of East Coast liberalism, are Republicans.

The competition between the two parties has also remained vigorous at the state level. The GOP emerged from elections in 2000 and 2002 as the majority party in a majority of state legislative bodies; the current split is GOP 54, Democrats 44 among the chambers organized along partisan lines.

The story of the GOP advance has, in most quarters, been under-written and under-reported. The smart political reporting, especially since 2000, has tended to focus on the idea that the two parties are at parity and stuck there. The slim GOP majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and the narrowness of Bush's 2000 win are cited as proof of that assertion.

This may be true, if recent elections are used as the baseline. If the longer view is taken into account, the GOP has undeniably made significant gains and may well be on its way to becoming the natural majority party even as some analysts predict the political pendulum is about to swing to the left.

The thing about this restoration of Republican rule is that all it really represents is a return to the status quo after the unfortunate displacement caused by the Depression. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 17, 2003 7:38 PM