After years of performance that could be best described as wildly inconsistent and at worst can be compared to a Big Ten team in a bowl game, the Democrats relinquished control of the House Wednesday in an episode that spliced together the ceremonious with the awkward.
While the move comes at no shock given the considerable conservative backlash that has swept across the country since the last general election, it should cause Americans from both sides of the political landscape to pause and reflect. For Democrats, the scene of numerous freshmen GOP congressmen walking up the steps of Capitol Hill waving the banner of deregulation and “freedom of choice” should serve as a warning shot across the bow for what will prove to be a bitter battle in November 2012.
Republicans, on the other hand, should not see their victory last November as the ultimate sign of confidence from the American people. While many Republican lawmakers described their electoral victories as “the American people finally letting their voices being heard,” it was this same “American voice” that called for their heads only two years prior, a fervor fueled by a heavy intoxication of anti-Bush sentiment.
We ask Republicans in Washington not to use this newly packed-on muscle to constantly swing the hammer at Democrats in an effort to live through the ghosts of Taft, Goldwater and Reagan. While the right-wing may try to relive the glory days of 1776, 1946 and 1981, we caution them to remember 1995, when a former history professor from the state of Georgia tried to rally his forces for a final stand against an “overbearing” Democratic executive, only to have his Aces cracked in the federal government shutdown.
Sometimes, the House doesn’t always win.
