It was November, 1995. A year earlier, the Republicans had taken over both houses of Congress, and their firebrand conservative leader, Newt Gingrich, had become House Speaker. Conventional wisdom said that this victory was a wholesale public embrace of Gingrich-style conservatism, and a repudiation of liberalism. President Bill Clinton was doomed to be a one-term president and a footnote to history like his predecessors that had been defeated for re-election, such as Millard Filmore or Chester Arthur.
Another leader of the right-wing charge was Virginia Governor George Allen, who had been in its vanguard, winning his office a year before Gingrich won his. Allen had been victorious in solidly-GOP Virginia with support from that state’s strong Christian right, and had sustained that support by emphasizing such inherently Christian causes as abolishing parole and forcing welfare recipients to reveal the fathers of their children. The state party he led was flush with these successes, and with the money and enthusiasm that would fuel more successes. The state assembly, which had been controlled by Democrats for most of the past century, was one of the few restraints on Allen’s power, but surely the 1995 midterm elections would change that, and the Dems would be swept out of power on the conservative wave.
A funny thing happened on the way to Allen’s coronation, however: the Democrats won the midterm election, and even gained seats.
How did it happen? (More details after the fold.)
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