The Right Is Wrong And So's The Left: Congressional Chaos Series, Part 1: Why So Many Republicans Might Have Listened To Newt Gingrich and How He Became the First Victim of His Creation

 

The two worst things in the world are not getting what you want and getting it.

Oscar Wilde

 

I’ve been wondering the last two weeks how to best express my opinions on the chaos that has unfolded ever since Kevin McCarthy was forced out of the Speakership. I was torn on the idea from the moment it was floating and no part of it fills me with joy.

Expressing my opinion to explain why we got to this point, however, was more complicated. I thought I could do so in a single long article. But now given where we are as of this writing that McCarthy’s being removed from power was inevitable and that the full responsibility for it must be laid at the feet not only of the Republican Party but the Democrats as well.

This narrative does not fit the one that the left has been pushing, nor I suspect that it fits the one the media is. However, when what looks at the history of the GOP in the House of Representatives, it is hard not to draw that this was going to happen in some way. I did not think McCarthy was going to survive very long as Speaker even if the motion hadn’t been brought or even if the vote had gone his way. The past thirty years in the House have demonstrated that when it comes to the Speakership for Republicans both parts of the quote above apply. Few who know the history of the House in this period would argue that point.

Where my conclusion differs is that all of this can be laid entirely at the foot of the Republicans or even cable news. But in order to explain this, it will take several articles many of which involve historical context. Since I am very familiar with that, I think I’m qualified to make these assessments. So this will probably take four or five articles (by which point the speakership may temporarily be resolved) in which I offer a not quite alternative reasoning as to why the Republicans at least when it comes to Congressional leadership seem to be better at acquired power than either doing anything with it or holding on to it.

Let’s start with a historical fact: from 1930, when the Democrats took over the House in the aftermath of the Depression, until the Republican Revolution of 1994, the GOP controlled the house for a grand total of two non-consecutive two year periods. I’ve written about both of them in passing in my historical series but for those of you who haven’t read them, those two periods occurred in 1947-1949 and 1953-1954.

 On the former occasion, dissatisfaction with fifteen years of Democratic rule led the Republicans to win control of both houses of Congress by substantial margins in 1946.  Harry Truman’s reelection campaign in 1948 was not so much waged against Republican Tom Dewey but the ‘Do-Nothing Congress’. Dewey’s anemic campaign not only cost him the White House but swept the Democrats back into power by substantial majorities.

In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower the hero of World War II, won election to the White House by what was to that point the most sweeping Republican electoral landslide in history.  He carried thirty-nine of 48 states and won 442 electoral votes to Adlai Stevenson’s 89.  The Republicans returned to power in both Houses of Congress, but Eisenhower’s coattails did not drag as many Congressmen as the GOP had hoped. They had only a two seat majority in the Senate and an eight seat majority in the house. In the 1954 midterms they lost both and would never gain the House of Representatives back for the next forty years.

Indeed, one of the biggest frustrations the GOP had over the next four decades was that no matter which Republican was at the top of the ticket, it never translated to a Congressional majority in both houses. Considering that in five of those elections, the Republican Presidential candidate garnered at least 400 electoral votes, it must have been maddening for even the moderates at the time.

And I can see why it would have become increasingly infuriating in the quarter of a century following Nixon’s narrow election to the Presidency in 1968. During that period, the Republicans won five of six Presidential elections. In the four victories following Nixon’s squeaker, all four Republican candidates would win over 425 Electoral votes. Two different Presidents would win reelection carrying 49 of 50 states. And yet for all the popularity of Ronald Reagan, not once did he have a House of Representatives that was controlled by the GOP. In his 1984 landslide, the GOP managed to gain 16 seats in the House. Mondale lost to Reagan in a landslide but the Democrat Party at a Congressional level beat the Republicans by more than five percent nationally.  They still had 253 seats when it was over. The most beloved Republican in history couldn’t even come close to getting his party in control of the House.

Many people have wondered how Gingrich’s was allowed to serve as such a destructive force from the moment he won election to the House in 1977.  Maybe the reason so many on the right were willing overlook their personal feelings towards him because the right was looking at the disconnect between the enormous electoral victories of their Presidents and the poor Congressional returns election after election.  They had played by the rules for forty years and it had gotten them nowhere. They had the White House but they were dependent on Democratic largesse to get them the crumbs they were getting and they  wanted more. And the moderates who’d been in power for decades and who were getting frustrated with never having power, might have been inclined to see if it worked.

So yes Gingrich and to an extent men like Jesse Helms did everything in their power to wreck the way Congress had worked for two centuries. But an argument could be made that being institutionalists was getting them nowhere but a perpetual and possibly permanent minority.  Those Democrats who mourn the destruction of ‘civility’ in Congress tend to forget that it was a civility in which they held all the power. Republicans wanted to win  by any means necessary and none of their alternatives were working. It doesn’t excuse the methods of men like Gingrich but it is an explanation why so many people went along with it.

The problem was when Gingrich managed to lead the Republicans to victory in 1994, he was like the dog who caught the bus: now what did he do? Republicans might have majorities in both houses of Congress, but there was still a Democrat in the White House.  The majorities in the Senate were far smaller: 54 to 46 (and that was only after two Democrats switched parties after the election). And while the shift was huge when it came to sectional changes, Gingrich’s actuality majority was 230 seats to 204 for the Democrats. 

Gingrich’s ‘Contract With America’ was a brilliant campaign tactic but much of it was gutted by the Senate and was vetoed by Clinton afterwards. While Congress every so often overrode his veto they did so with Bipartisan support. Many of the bills that passed – particularly in the Senate – went through with a huge amount of Democratic support. So much as you want to blame Gingrich for rolling back certain parts of the Democratic establishment the Democrats were more than willing to help at least initially.

The problem was, as Gingrich quickly found out, was that was you start feeding the beast they are never satisfied. Most of the members of the caucus had been promised meals and considered these scraps.  Gingrich, like every other Republican in the House since then, learned the hard way that there is a huge difference between what you promise your followers and what you can deliver once your in power.  I’d argue the problem with the GOP in the House has been the same for thirty years – they have no ability to accept this as a reality. With the right-wing media and leadership doing everything to insist that Clinton was the enemy, they wanted his head. And once he won reelection in a landslide, they decided to find another way.

The attempt to impeach Clinton has always struck me as fundamentally absurd as with so many of the other attempts to impeach Democrat Presidents over the years. The GOP rank and file genuinely seem to believe that once they remove their enemy – the President – they will have managed a victory for their cause. They seem to have forgotten that the Vice President is also a Democrat and at some point they just can’t keep impeaching through the chain of command. Perhaps Gingrich’s thinking – assuming there was any at all – was to take out first Clinton, then Gore and have himself become President.  How exactly he would have done that is a mystery for the ages but I’ve never thought anybody in leadership goes that far – and I have to say that includes the Democrats whenever they consider impeaching a Republican.

It's also clear the GOP never got that far in that thinking by the time they got around to offering articles in the fall of 1998. The majority in the Senate was 56 to 44. Somehow they were going to have present a case so compelling that eleven Democrats would be convinced and agree with them. That was never going to happen based on how the hearings in Congress went.  As would famously be said on The Wire a few years later, “you come at the king, you better not miss.” Gingrich had spent twenty years in Congress, he had to know how loyal the Democrats were to Clinton and how much they loathed him. His court was going to protect him no matter what, and he was never going to get even close to the King.

And as we saw it play out, that’s exactly what happened. Even before the articles were offered the 1998 midterms were a repudiation of what the GOP was doing. In something that had not happened in the 20^th century, the party in power gained seats in the House during the 1998 midterms. Republicans had made their campaign entirely about the Starr report and the impeachment of Clinton, and the voters repudiated them. The Senate it’s worth noting stayed exactly the same.

 Gingrich faced his own backlash from the leadership and was forced to resign.  Bob Livingston was next in line and was about to become Speaker when he himself resigned from Congress in January of 1999.  Both Gingrich and Livingston were fundamentally forced out because people saw both men as hypocrites.  Most people thought Clinton’s impeachment had to do more about his extramarital antics than any high crimes and misdemeanors.  Recent revelations came out that Gingrich had himself been having an affair with a much younger Congressional employee.  Not long after lining up the votes, information came out from that Livingston too had had extramarital affairs. Democrats, it’s worth noting, were willing to standby Livingston but Livingston had chosen to put party ahead of his own desires. He would resign from Congress in March of 1999 a full month after the Senate acquitted Clinton.

In his place Livingston agreed to have Dennis Hastert take over as Speaker. Livingston considered that Hastert was a disaster for the Republicans.  That in itself is interesting, considering that Hastert served as Speaker for eight years before he resigned in 2007 rather than become minority leader.  Hastert’s criminal and deviant behavior did not become public knowledge until many years later.

So why does Livingston consider Hastert a failure? In the next article in this series, I will look at Hastert’s leadership, most of which took place under the Presidency of George W. Bush. In that same article I will look at the mistakes the Democrats made in leadership at the time – and that the current crop of Democrats in the House seemed determined to have learned the wrong lessons from them.