MM#347---The Conservative Revolution Lives on in 1994

0:07 Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, david Kaiser. Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute. Over the past four weeks we have covered in the Pivotal Tuesdays series the pivotal election of 1912 and how radical Woodrow Wilson was. We followed that by talking about Woodrow Wilson's wife, who essentially ran the government without being duly elected for some 18 unbelievable months, which most likely is what happened in this crazy election year of 2024, when we had Jill Biden essentially ushering around a senile, non-copus mentis President Joe Biden for some three of the last years.

1:13 So I can't imagine what the real story is once that history is properly researched and written. But then we pivoted to the pivotal election of 1932, where FDR grew the federal government to an astronomical size with the hopes of ending the Great Depression, which he ultimately didn't accomplish and which we covered just after that in our episode of the New Deal or Raw Deal, and we concluded it was a very raw deal how FDR's economic policies ultimately hurt the American people. Then we zoomed up to the pivotal election of 1968, where we covered an insecure Richard Nixon barely winning and then leading the GOP off a cliff with his liberal policies.

2:04 And we follow that by just how crazy the year 1968 itself was, with two assassinations and the drugs and the peace protest and the race riots and the more riots and everything was a riot. Everybody was angry about something. And we follow that two-part episode with the crazy Democratic National Convention of 1968, where all hell broke loose in Chicago and where the whole world was watching while all hell broke loose. And then this past week we covered the restoration of the constitutional order in our country with the pivotal election of 1980 and the legacy of the conservative counter-revolution of Ronald Reagan and how they made America great again the first time they were the OG.

2:57 That was a two-part episode as well, so be sure to check out our political sprint over the last four weeks and the accompanying episodes from those time periods. We think it is some of our best work and before we kick off today's episode, be sure to give us some feedback. You can do that easily in the show notes with a new feature that's been out there for probably three or four months but, as your duly noted host, I have forgotten to tell you about it. So shame on me, but we have a new feature there in the show notes. You can click on the link to send us a text message. It is free, it's immediate and it comes right to our inbox.

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4:22 Click on that text link and send us a text message. We'd love to hear the feedback from you, especially of those good comments, so we can navel, gaze over here a little bit. And with that we are going to move to our feature programming, as they say in showbiz, and in our last episode we talked about the Reagan Revolution and what happened after George HW Bush lost in 1992. Was the Reagan Revolution over and done with after that election? And we said not, so fast, my friend. Today's episode we will cover how the conservative revolution, which started in 1980 with that pivotal election, it continued on in 1984 with Reagan winning 49 states and then continued on in 1990 or 1988 with the vaunted third term and the election of Bush 41.

5:23 And then it finally continued all the way past Bush's defeat in 1992, where he was branded as an imposter to the Reagan revolution and where in 1994, a fiery brand of conservatives would upend Washington DC with their contract with America. And for that we're going to go to the 1996 almanac of American politics, the Bible of political junkies like myself. And in the 1996 almanac he writes about the 1994 election, saying this Go into the book.

6:06 But the 1994 election does go a long way towards settling an argument that had been raging for at least a dozen years about where we stand in our history. The more familiar theory of our times is implicit in the narratives of the Great New Deal historians and set forth as a cyclical theory by the best of them, arthur Schlesinger Jr. According to this theory, american politics turns primarily on economic issues and is a continuous struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

6:46 Every generation, a new leader comes forward, supported by a generation of young idealists proposing public action to solve national problems, that leader and his programs are embraced for a time by the people, who then sink back to support conservatives who try to maintain the status quo. In this view, history always moves to the left, lurching leftward when prodded by liberal leaders, then pausing, then lurching leftward again Jefferson, jackson, lincoln, the two Roosevelts, kennedy and, said, schlesinger. Hopefully, after the 1992 election, bill Clinton.

7:27 But another theory holds that politics divides Americans less often on economic than along cultural lines, according to race, religion, region, ethnic group and cultural values. It believes that Americans are looking to government not so much for economic redistribution. Looking to government not so much for economic redistribution Indeed, until the mid-20th century, government did not seem capable of massive economic redistribution but for the maintenance of basic order. Not some authoritarian order, it must be added, but an orderly framework in which people can make their livings, raise their families and work together in their communities. This theory holds that most Americans do not cast their votes just as a referendum on the performance of the macroeconomy, though some marginal number of votes, frequently enough to change the outcome of otherwise close elections, often do so.

8:26 Rather, their voting allegiance is determined by the accumulated effects of experiences over the time that cut to the quick of their lives. Thus, millions of Americans switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party in response to the economic disorder of the 1930s, and then millions of Americans switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party in response to the cultural disorder of the late 1960s. There is no inevitable cycle here occurring at a certain place on the calendar, rather than people responding to real events and carry the experience of those events with them the rest of their lives or until until some other extended series of events cuts as deeply.

9:19 And doesn't that sound? Doesn't that sound? Doesn't that second theory sound more closer to the truth? The New Deal historians always seem to want to go back to more authoritarian, centralized government theories. This play out over the last 30 plus years. Since I've been a political junkie since my days of coming out of college and going right to Washington DC and watching it up close for three years and then coming back to the heartland and watching it from afar, I'd have to say unequivocally the second theory is what has the most credence.

10:04 Let's go back to the book. The presidential results of the last quarter century give powerful support to the second theory. Republicans won five of six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988 and lost the other 1976, by only a 50 to 48 percent margin. Republicans had an average margin of 53 to 43 percent, a larger advantage than any party has won over any other six elections in american history. But democrats won control the senate during most of that period and held the and in 1992.

10:50 When Bill Clinton was elected, schlesinger was the only one of the many who argued that his victory proved the cyclical theory was right. The new liberal leader had arrived Surrounded by a coatiere of idealistic aides and America was ready, in this generation once again for a lurch to the left. And here comes our conservative nugget of wisdom. Going back to the book, the 1994 election goes about as far as any election could towards settling the argument. Franklin Roosevelt, after his first victory in 1932, saw his party gain seats in the House and the Senate in 1934, the only such off-year gain for the party in power in American history.

11:40 John Kennedy, after his victory in 1960, saw his party gain four seats in the Senate and lose four in the House in 1962, a trade-off any president would accept and the second best showing of any party in history. In contrast, bill Clinton, after his victory in 1992, saw his party lose control of both the Senate and the House in 1994. The most disastrous first-term loss for a president since Herbert Hoover in the Great Depression in 1930. Since World War II, the average loss of the party in power during the first term after the election of a president has been zero seats in the Senate and 13 in the House.

12:26 Bill Clinton's party lost eight seats in the Senate and 52 in the House. Moreover, these losses came at a time when the macroeconomy was growing and the United States was at peace. A clearer repudiation of the party in power cannot be imagined. Wherever history is headed, it is no longer headed left. The results were no accident. So just how did this fiery brand of conservatives win in 1994? Well, enter the vaunted contract with America Going back to Michael Barone, with America going back to Michael Barone.

13:14 So the forces nationalizing the election were already very busy at work when Newt Gingrich assembled 300 plus Republican incumbents and candidates on the steps of the Capitol September 27th to sign the House Republican contract with America. When White House political strategist two weeks later decided to run against the contract, even before the contract was signed, most Republican challengers and open seat candidates were running on platforms very much like it, emphasizing not the personal qualification and local issues Democrats have been campaigning on for years, but their support for specific measures to discipline and cut the size of government, the balanced budget amendment, the line item, veto term limits, applying to Congress the laws that it applies to everyone else.

14:06 The contract simply helped to standardize Republican campaigns even more and to give the party a convenient label for a set of proposals that were widely popular. The Democrats' decision to run against the contract is explicable only by observing they had nothing else to run on. Their institutional advantages, as already noted, were vanishing. To run on, their institutional advantages, as already noted, were vanishing. The economic package, crime bill and health care plan they had counted on as assets turned out to be liabilities. The president, whose support they expected might help them as Franklin Roosevelt helped in 1934 and John Kennedy in 1962, ended up traveling to the Middle East in October because he had so few invitations to the Middle West.

14:57 Ha ha, bill Clinton traveled to the Middle East instead of helping his own party in the Midwest. Not good when you are not a very popular president, aka Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris. But let's face it wherever Bill Clinton was headed in 1994, it didn't pan out because there was no Middle East peace plan. So you can tell how deep and how fundamental was the Republican revolution that continued on by the federal elections in 1994, but the state and the gubernatorial elections were just as deep.

15:39 Again, going back to Michael Barone on this very point, more evidence that the congressional results were no accident came in the elections for governor and other state offices. The eight largest states with 49% of the nation's population all had seriously contested elections for governor. Republicans won seven of the eight races and the Democrat who won the other, lawton Childs of Florida, carried only voters age 65 and over and lost among voters under 65. Republicans won control of both houses in the legislature in Pennsylvania, ohio, michigan and Illinois.

16:20 They won lower state offices in New York, ohio, michigan, illinois, florida, texas and California. In all these contests there were personal and local factors and different personalities, but in all the basic contrast between the parties closely resembled the contrast between the parties nationally. And here's another nugget the Republican victory in 1994 arose from fundamental, not incidental causes. It was the result of voters' rational responses to the party's differences on major issues, not to some accidental events or irrational pyrrhosis of anger.

17:07 The long course of election results over the last quarter century proves as much as these things can ever be proved, that 1992 was the exception and 1994 is the rule. We are moving away from and our renunciation of traditional cultural mores and possibly ready to embrace them again. We cherish and inchoate mostly unarticulated American nationalism that guides our unfocused, seeming contradictory impulses on foreign and defense and trade policy.

17:54 So you can see, as we take a big step back and we look at how things progressed over the course of the mid to late 90s, with the election in 1994 and then moving on to 1996, you can see the conservative counter-revolution that started in 1980 had simply ground that march towards progressivism by the liberals to an abrupt halt. The middle to late 90s and even all the way to probably the election of 2008, the country remained a stalemate. Probably the election of 2008,.

18:35 The country remained a stalemate. In fact. Here's a broad brush of just how the country looked politically over that time. Actually, let's go from 1994 all the way to our current time. Since 1994, the Republican Party, the GOP, has controlled the US Congress multiple times. Let's break down their control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. First, the House of Representatives. So it had control from 1995 all the way to 2007. They gained control in the 94 elections and they maintained it until the 2006 elections. Democrats took over in 2007. Republicans regained control in the 2010 elections after the Tea Party and the two years the radical two years of Barack Obama.

19:21 They held it again in the House until 2018, when Democrats won the majority and Republicans just gained control of the House again in the 2020 elections 2022 elections. Rather, now about the Senate. Republicans took control following the 94 elections and maintained it until Democrats gained the majority in 2001. Republicans regained it after the 2002 elections and held it until the 2006 election. It after the 2002 elections and held it until the 2006 election. Republicans controlled the Senate after the 2014 elections, all the way until the Democrats took it in 2021.

20:02 So, overall, the Federal Congress since 1994 has controlled the House for approximately 18 years and the Senate for about 16 years. And what were the major accomplishments of that Reagan revolution in the 90s? Well, they were significant. Number one welfare reform. That was part of there was 10 items on the contract with America and the three big ones were welfare reform, the balanced budget and tax cuts. You'll remember the balanced budget is what Ronald Reagan ran on as a constitutional amendment. Now, getting back to welfare, it's one of the welfare reform was one of the most notable achievements because it overhauled the complete welfare system, culminated in personal responsibility in the Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

20:58 This is where the fiery conservatives essentially cornered Bill Clinton and negotiated him to death until he signed it. I think I was there as an intern in 96. I think we forced him three times to the table and on the third time he actually did sign it. It was a boon to the economy because it got a whole bunch of people working again. Second item of the Contractor with America was the balanced budget. In collaboration with President Bill Clinton, again, they achieved balanced federal budgets in the late 90s.

21:40 It was the first time the budget was balanced since 1969, and the country ran a surplus by 2000. Unheard of with our $34 trillion deficit right now. And then the GOP pushed through significant tax cuts which were part of the broader economic agenda to stimulate growth along with welfare reform. The broader economic agenda to stimulate growth along with welfare reform. These tax cuts align with conservative economic principles, mainly supply-side economics, that Ronald Reagan introduced to the party and the country and that just contributed to give a kick in the pants to the economy and we had a whole other series of robust economic growth.

22:24 In fact, that growth was so extraordinary that we had GDP growth rates of 4% or higher from 1997 through 2000. Unemployment rates dropped significantly. The economy created another 3 million jobs each year from 97 to 99. And that's poultry compared to or. What we're doing now is poultry compared to what was done then. We had crime and tax relief. The GOP Congress enacted measures to reduce crime and provide middle class tax relief, like we talked about, um efforts to reduce the size of government and come implement a more conservative approach to governance.

23:14 Um, so you can see, the GOP Congress in the mid to late 1990s got a good deal done. Coming on the coattails of the conservative revolution begun in 1980 under president reagan and essentially reset the political landscape, gop had not had control of either the house or the senate for a long period of time, going all the way back to even before the world war ii, all the way back to the 20s. So we just heard about federal elections and that conservative revolution was in fact much deeper than that.

23:59 Taking a look at the state level, like we talked about since 1994, the Democratic Party's control over state legislatures and governorships had been significant. Uh, from 1994 to 2010. During the 1994 Republican revolution, democrats lost many state legislative chambers to Republicans. Uh, by 2010, democrats controlled 60 state legislative chambers, but this number decreased significantly in subsequent elections. From the period of 2010 to 2018 saw Republicans gaining control of more state legislatures.

24:40 By 2014, republicans controlled 68 chambers, compared to the Democrats 30. By 2018, until now, democrats gained some ground back, starting in 2018. But by 2023, democrats controlled 41 chambers to the Republicans 56. Democrats controlled 41 chambers to the Republicans 56. So you can see where GOP state legislatures were governing from conservative principles. You see states thriving. Now, since 2018, with Donald Trump at the head of the ticket, the Republican Party is becoming more populous and less conservative as a political party, and Donald Trump is reshaping that party in his own image.

25:30 Now, what about the governors? The governors? Since 1994, democratic governors had faced many setbacks. Um, it was actually, uh, the first time since 1969 that Republicans secured a majority of the governorships in an election cycle in 1994. Um, between 2010 and 2018, republicans increased their control of the governors. In 2018, republicans increased their control of the governors and by 2018, republicans held 33 governorships compared to the Democrats' 16.

26:19 That's almost unheard of, and then Democrats had made some gains in recent years. They gained governorships Maryland and Massachusetts but, however, republicans still maintain a majority of the governorships across the United States. So the GOP governors, particularly those that were strong through the COVID, who I'm a big fan of, who, without a doubt, is the governor most resembling the qualities of the Reagan revolution, at least from the 1980s onward. That's how he governs.

26:59 In fact, what he has done in Florida in just one term is remarkable. Has done in Florida in just one term is remarkable, so it will be absolutely interesting to see what he can do in a second term. So what began with the Reagan conservative counter-revolution in 1980 has spread like a prairie wildfire over the country and saturated a rebalancing from the New Deal policy so evident from the 1930s to the 1980s. That same revolution continued marching with the fiery brand of conservatives in Congress in 1994, and it went all the way to roughly 2008.

27:40 Now, somewhere in the second term of George W Bush, the conservative revolution ebbed away. George W Bush's second term was marked with nothing resembling governing like a conservative, and he betrayed that part that actually got him there His economic foibles with the great recession in 2017 and 20, 2007 and 2008,. Uh, looked more like Herbert Hoover's policies than Ronald Reagan's. But this is about the conservative revolution and how long it lasted.

28:24 So let's end with a wonderful quote that I had just read, in which I don't know if I'd ever heard anybody put the whole conservative counter-revolution together in one succinct quote. But I just read it about a week ago and I like it more and more the more I have meditated over its implications. And the quote comes to us from a wonderful book that just came in the mail. I bought it used from the old Fox news reporter major Garrett, and the title of the book is the enduring revolution how the contract with America Continues to Shape the Nation.

29:07 Let's go and end this episode with this fantastic quote A decade after the Republican Revolution, this much is certain. He's writing in 2005. So roughly a decade with the Republican Revolution in 1994, continuing on from the conservative counter -revolution of 1980 with Ronald Reagan. So a decade after the Republican Revolution, this much is certain we are a different country because of the contract with America. Our direction will continue to be shaped more durably and more profitably by the contract with America. Our direction will continue to be shaped more durably and more profitably by the contract than any other manifesto of the 20th century.

29:51 Where does it lead? How will the contract change America in the next 10 years? Specifically, not at all, but in tone and spirit it has already defined the next decade of the Republican domestic policy. When a president, george W Bush, and top GOP figures spoke of a quote ownership society in the 2004 campaign, they were describing a world defined by the core precepts of the contract individual choices, government incentives to save and invest for life's exigencies, and freedom from the government-produced forms, rules and allocations when it comes to retirement security through Social Security, medicine through Medicare and Medicaid, and education through public schools or college loans, or starting a small business or building an alternative to traditional one-company pensions.

30:48 This isn't the contract in word or deed, but it is in spirit. One is descended from the other, just as the contract is descendant from Reaganism. And since the Republicans have solidified and expanded their power after their stunning success in the 2004 elections, they now hold even more seats in the House and Senate than they did after the historic 1994 elections. They have positioned themselves to put their imprint on American society. And here is this fantastic conservative nugget of wisdom One Republican operative deeply versed in the history of Western civilization once described it this way Reagan represented the Greeks who created and defined the broadest swaths of enlightened civilization.

31:48 The contract and those who carried it out represented the Romans, who borrowed from the Greeks but added a muscularity and a practicality that spread civilization across much of the known world and President Bush's ownership society represented the Byzantines, who moved away from some aspects of Roman rule but remained faithful to the Greek definition of civilization. The analogy is by no means perfect. Reducing centuries-old civilizations to the crudites of American executive and legislative politics is, one must confess, a bit more than a bit garish.

32:30 But if you think of Reagan as the center of the GOP universe, which we should the wellspring of its intellectual and political identity, then yes, the Greek analogy applies. Similarly, the Republican congressional majority was nothing if not Roman in its ferocity and techno-prisoner's approach to politics, and it had remade the political landscape, bringing the GOP into parts of the country where, at least legislatively, it had never or rarely trod before. So the Roman analogy roughly fits. As for the Byzantines, they moved the geographic center of the Roman Empire eastward and thereby cut the cords with Rome in its militaristic and expansionist ways.

33:21 They also offered a softer version of that culture, borrowing more from Greek culture and Greek politics. In this the Bush reign the first time a Republican president enjoyed a concentrated Republican congressional majority since the time of Herbert Hoover can be seen at least partially Byzantine. It has paid homage to Reagan with tax cuts and strong defense, but has also sloughed off some of the harsher forms of the early GOP congressional revolutionaries. The Romans adapted to the real-world political realities by spending more on domestic programs, education chief among them, and redefined the approach to conservatism by adapting limited free market concepts to pre-existing entitlement programs such as medicare, greek, roman and byzantine.

34:18 It may all seem an almost ludicrous stretch, but republic Republicans who have been living through this period and pondering its future don't think so. And perhaps the best place to end this dissection of the contract with America is with a question Can any other period in American political history ascribe to itself such an epochal intellectual and cultural heritage? I, for one, one can't think of any. And so, in today's Mojo Minute, know that the Reagan Revolution, which began in 1980, lasted a very long time and ushered in a restoration of the constitutional order, a revitalization of the American spirit and economic prosperity for more than some 25 years, all the way into the mid-2000s.

35:13 And this is not a nostalgia for Reagan himself but for the principles of the conservative revolution he helped to launch. Remember, reagan had developed these principles from the 1950s and the 60s. He supported Goldwater in 1964 when he gave the infamous time for choosing speech. Conservatives lost badly in 1964, but Reagan's principles endured. He kept fighting for those principles because he believed in them At his root, at his gut. He won the California governor race twice and he began implementing those principles.

35:54 He runs for president in 76, and he challenges an incumbent but very weak president, gerald Ford, in the primaries Unheard of for the time. He comes up just short. Reagan keeps fighting for those conservative principles and he finally breaks through in 1980 and wins, and wins big. And then, as we know, the rest is history. So we've learned a great deal from the conservative retelling of that history over the last five weeks. And so again, the conservative principles of the counter-revolution should be studied because they are the principles of the founding of our American government, of our constitutional representative republic, and there is so much to learn and to be studied what those principles that helped to restore the constitutional order and how they helped to restore it again in 1980, which has lasted roughly all the way until 2005, with that fiery brand of conservatives in Congress.

37:02 So with that, let's keep fighting for those conservative principles and, as always, let's keep fighting the good fight. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.