WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN:

Power in Washington is shifting (Tony Blankley, 11/26/03, Washington Times)

So complete was the FDR Democrats' acquisition of power in this city, that it has until now withstood the erosive assaults of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and Gingrich. Their total possession of the federal government from 1932-1946 engendered and brought to maturity the Democratic Party's sense of a birthright to power.

The first cornerstone of their actual power was, of course, the presidencies of FDR and Truman from 1932-1952. Their second cornerstone was control of the House of Representatives (the purse strings of government) for 40 straight years (and 58 of the 62 years) prior to the Republican take over in 1994. (They also controlled the Senate for almost as many of those years.) The third cornerstone was their domination, both physical and spiritual, of the unofficial power sources of Washington: the great law firms, lobbyists, trade associations, publicists, news organs, federal bureaucracies and think tanks. The fourth cornerstone was, in fact, their sense of a birthright to power. Republican presidents, when they came to Washington, couldn't deny that birthright, and felt like self-conscious interlopers — playing a perpetual away game against the hometown team.

Even when the first and second cornerstones (the White House and Congress) were taken away, the Democratic power edifice stood firmly on the real, but less visible, remaining ones. But slowly, the remaining cornerstones have begun to crumble, as the Democrats have become more attenuated in time from the House of Representatives — for 40 years their bulwark — and are frozen out of the remaining government. The Republicans — first, Newt Gingrich and now Tom DeLay and Speaker Denny Hastert — have been persistently prying the cold, almost dead, Democratic fingers off the law firms, lobbyists and trade associations. (They also have given and received succor from the new media of cable news, talk radio, the Internet and the now legions of conservative commentators.)

The Republicans have also begun doing to Democrats what Democrats did to Republicans for half a century — cutting them out of both the information and influence loop on legislation. The Medicare legislative process is a prime example. Over the last few months, when ranking Democratic congressmen and senators have spoken before vital trade associations, they have been unable to tell their audiences the status of Medicare legislation, for the simple reason that they have been cut out of the negotiations. On the other hand, key Republicans have been able to provide up-to-the-minute insights into the decision-making that can make or break whole industries.

It seems fair to measure the next cycle in American politics from the starting point of the GOP being able to reform an entitlement program on its own.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 27, 2003 6:55 AM