This report was written by Dan Freedman of the Washington bureau.
If past is prologue, Republicans might not want to plan for a long stay atop the House of Representatives.
There have been three elections since World War II in which House Republicans toppled their Democratic counterparts on Capitol Hill — although this is the first time the House has gone Republican without the Senate following suit.
Here’s a brief history of previous Republican control of the House of Representatives over the past eight decades:
White House photoHarry Truman was exceedingly unpopular in 1946, and Democrats had controlled Capitol Hill for 15 years, so voters were ready for a change.
ELECTION YEAR: 1946
CAMPAIGN: With World War II over, America returned to a peacetime economy. But perceived Democratic governmental overreaching plus a wave of labor strikes dealt Republicans a favorable hand with voters. President Harry Truman took up President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s expansive view of government, refusing to drop wartime price controls and promising national health insurance. (Sound familiar?)
Truman’s popularity plummeted, giving rise to rounds of jokes such as: “To err is Truman.”
RESULT: Republicans won back the House for the first time since losing it in 1930, gaining 55 seats. They also won back the Senate.
AFTERMATH: Despite GOP control of Capitol Hill, Truman amassed a record of achievement, including the Marshall Plan to rebuild war-torn Europe, integrating the armed forces and early recognition of Israel. His aggressive 1948 presidential campaign against lackluster N.Y. Gov. Thomas E. Dewey took aim at the “do-nothing Congress,” which was immobilized by conflict between its conservative and moderate wings. The famous Chicago Tribune headline notwithstanding, Truman defeated Dewey and swept in 72 Democrats to retake Congress.
THE RED MENACE
ELECTION YEAR: 1952
CAMPAIGN: Truman’s victory lap did not last long. By 1952, the Korean conflict had turned the Cold War red hot. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., dominated the front page with charges of Communist infiltration of the State Department and other government agencies. Truman’s popularity plummeted. To prevent a steelworkers’ strike, he seized control of steel mills only to have the Supreme Court tell him he couldn’t. He declined to run for re-election. Republican presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme allied commander in World War II, promised “I shall go to Korea” and figure out how to end it.
RESULT: Eisenhower bested “egg head” Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois. Republicans gained the Senate and 22 House seats, enough for complete control of Washington.
AFTERMATH: With Republicans in charge, McCarthy took the reins of an investigative subcommittee and took aim at government agencies and programs ranging from Voice of America to State Department libraries overseas to the U.S. Army. The Army-McCarthy hearings were televised and McCarthy came off a a bully. “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” intoned Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army. McCarthy’s poll numbers sank amid charges of “smear tactics” and false accusations of secret communist conspiracies.
After Democrats routed them from power in 1954, Republicans would not retake the House until 1994 (although they retook the Senate with the Ronald Reagan landslide of 1980). One Democrat remains in Congress from that freshman Class of 1954: Rep. John Dingell Jr. of Michigan.
AP photoNewt Gingrich unveils the “Contract with America” in 1994. If you have sharp eyes, you can see future Speaker John Boehner on the left edge of the picture and Mississippi governor (and potential presidential candidate) Haley Barbour on the right edge of the photo.
A CONTRACT WITH AMERICA
ELECTION YEAR: 1994
CAMPAIGN: Many Democrats scoffed at the notion that the Republicans, under the leadership of backbench bombthrower Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., could win back the House. But President Bill Clinton’s push for universal health care (seeing a pattern yet?), gun control and lowering barriers to gays serving in the military brought forth a tidal wave of resentment. Gingrich and his Republican colleagues crafted the “Contract with America,” an elixir of lower taxes, term limits and tort reform that they promised to enact if given control of Congress.
RESULT: Democrats lost 54 seats in the House and complete control of Capitol Hill for the first time in 40 years.
AFTERMATH: For Republicans, this was the Big Kahuna of electoral victories. The House remained in Republican hands until 2006 when frustration over the war in Iraq and growing budget deficits made voters wonder whether Republicans really were the party of effective hawkish foreign policy and fiscal conservatism.
But the carousel of time continued to spin round and round, all the way to 2010 when Democrats yielded the House with losses of 61 or more seats. The Democratic defeat represented a voter repudiation of President Obama’s Wall Street bailouts, stimulus packages and, you guessed it, health care reform.