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.)
How did this happen? There were many reasons. First of all, the conventional wisdom that right-wing conservatism was an invincible force, created in the wake of the 1993 and 1994 elections, turned out to be exaggerated at the least, and was further weakened when Clinton won election a year later. Second, the state party did indeed have vast resources, but perhaps because of overconfidence generated by having so many resources, it squandered them. Virginia voters were inundated with cheap, lurid, cookie-cutter fliers that accused every Democrat of being the same thing–a taxing, overspending caricature of Ed Kennedy or Walter Mondale. (This was before widespread use of the internet, when paper fliers were a common way of reaching voters.) The fliers insulted the intelligence of their intended audience, especially since many Democratic state legislators were from small-town or rural parts of Virginia, and were far from diehard liberals. Third, Allen made gaffes all too reminiscent of the one that would cost him his Senate seat eleven years later; he said he was eager to pound Democrats’ “soft teeth down their whiny throats,” and he showed up at the polls to vote in a cowboy outfit that seemed more Wyoming than Virginia.
Continued control of the legislature meant that the Democrats were able to limit Allen’s influence for the rest of his single term as Governor. It took two more legislative elections, and the accession of a more moderate-acting governor, for the Republicans to take control of the legislature; since then, they’ve controlled the House consistently and the Senate sporadically.
What does any of this have to do with 2012? I would argue that it has a lot to do with this year’s election. Then as now, the right wing has almost too much money, and seems to be only able to make one argument with it. Then as now, that same right wing has elevated too few of its genuinely competent leaders, instead nominating based on ideology, resulting in politicians who are in over their head. All of these things, I predict, will cost them in the 2012 election in the nation, just as it cost them in one state in 1995.