The end of the Republican Revolution

This is an article I wrote for a publication that the company I used to work for puts out every weekend. I will most likely post something a little more opinionated and less factual soon:

The Democratic Party took control of both houses of the United States Congress in the Midterm Elections held on Tuesday. The Democrats gained 33 seats in the House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate, seizing complete control of Congress from the Republicans for the first time in 12 years. In 1994, the Republican Party, led by Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich, took complete control of the United States Congress for the first time since 1952. In that election, the Republicans gained 54 seats in the House of Representatives and eight seats in the Senate in addition to picking up 12 governorships throughout the nation. This incredible sweep to power brought many of today's most powerful Republican politicians into office, including President George W. Bush (elected Governor of Texas), Bill Frist (Senator from Tennessee), George Pataki (Governor of New York) and Lindsey Graham (Senator from South Carolina). The Republican takeover seemed poised to doom the Presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton to one term. The victory was referred to by Senator Bob Dole, poised to become the Senate Majority leader, as a "vote of no confidence in the Clinton agenda," reported The Intelligencer on November 9, 1994. He went on to say that "a GOP majority would move to address voter concerns over 'big government, big taxes, [and] big regulation.'" However, Clinton's defeat of Dole in the 1996 presidential election hinted at the American voter's reticence to cede complete control of the government to a single party. All of that changed though with George W. Bush's defeat of Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. Since 2000, the Republicans have maintained control of the White House and Congress for all but 18 months from June 2001 to January 2002, after Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords defected from the party to become an independent. Since 1913, when voters gained the ability to directly elect their senators, there have been only four elections in which control of both the House and Senate shifted completely. The 1994 election was the largest power shift in terms of seats, with the Republicans gaining a total of 62 seats in Congress. Prior to that, the largest swing came in the 1952 election, where Republicans added 23 total seats to gain control of Congress. However, the 1954 election would see a reversal of that election with the Democrats picking up 20 total seats to regain control. The significance of midterm elections is often overlooked when compared to presidential elections, which carry with them a certain importance not attributed to congressional elections. However, midterm congressional elections often decide the ability of a president to carry out his agenda, and in the case of the 1994 and 2006, elections created the possibility for a "lame duck" administration where the president and his party will be unable to get any of their agenda into place during the congressional term. The largest change in congressional history occurred before voters gained the ability to vote directly for Senators. The election of 1894 saw the majority swing from Democrats to Republicans to the tune of 130 seats in the House of Representatives and 10 seats in the Senate. The shift in this election compares in stark contrast to the majority of congressional power shifts, which generally hinge on small numbers of seats changing parties. This is evidenced in the comparatively small number of seats that changed hands in 1994 and earlier this week, where the combined swing amounted to only 101 seats in both houses of Congress. From a historical perspective, the 2006 election is an important shift in power, yet if the Democrats are unable to sustain their hold in Congress, this power shift may be short lived, as was evidenced in the 1952 and 1954 elections.