Politics / Body Counts

...Roger Kimball The New Criterion "Paul Gross and Norman Levitt have dipped their pens in gall...

...Stanley Rothman National Review "A vigorous new chapter in the attack on academic inanity...

...McCollum helped bankroll a $35,000 independent expenditure against Tom Foley...

...Fifty-six percent agreed that "the government has limited [their] rights or threatened [their] basic beliefs...

...Amo Houghton (R-N.Y...

...The press-driven rumors of a Democratic resurgence in the days just before the election did not pan out...

...chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, points to another factor in the Republican win: the unprecedented decision by the Republican leadership to 48 The American Spectator January 1995 make a congressman's support for other Republican candidates a factor in committee assignments and intra-party promotion...

...The Christian Coalition distributed 33 million voter guides in the two weeks before the election...

...A rule of thumb among political consultants is that an incumbent who wins with less that 55 percent of the vote will be vulnerable the next time around...

...S25.95 hardcover The Johns Hopkins University Press Hampden Station Baltimore, MD 21211 To order, call I -800-537-5487...

...The contract itself was made up of ten proposals, such as term limits and a balanced-budget amendment, each of which has more than 70 percent support among the American people...

...All told, the NRA endorsed 276 House and Senate candidates, 221 of whom won...

...Fortune 500 firms, many of which have almost exclusively hired former Democratic staffers as lobbyists, will now find it behooves them to have Republicans comprise at least 50 percent of their Washington offices...

...While the media have been pointing to the defeat of 011ie North as a defeat for the religious right, exit polls by Frank Luntz found that 51 percent of those who voted against North cited Iran-contra concerns as the reason for their decision...

...Or former terror of the telecommunications industry Ed Markey (D-Mass...

...At the state level, Republican governors will compete over who can do the most damage to the liberal coalition in their respective states...

...Their vote this time went 69 percent for Republicans in the House and Senate, and 71 percent for Republican governors...

...Refreshing...

...The coming year is certain to further weaken House and Senate Democrats...

...The second catalyst for the Republican victory, Armey says, was the Contract With America...

...Elizabeth Fox-Genovese Washington Times "A hard-nosed defense of rationality and of a rigorous scientific education...

...Carville and Greenberg seem to have learned nothing from this tactic's failure in the 1993 New Jersey gubernatorial race, in which tax-hiker Jim Florio was defeated by tax-cutter Christine Todd Whitman...

...The American Spectator January 1995 49 POLITICS (continued from page 49) The Democrats' explanations for the rout haven't been convincing...

...Yet another factor in the rout was the strong support of the entire GOP coalition...

...they took over eighteen state legislative chambers, and now control fifty—three more than the Democrats...

...Fears that Republicans in control of the House and Senate will fail to capitalize on their newfound power—as Howard Baker (R-Tenn...

...The Democratic Party's effort to stigmatize evangelical voters did not work...

...Defeats at the state level will spell Democratic job losses across America...

...B ill Paxon (R-N.Y...

...On the Senate side, another 1,000 Democrats will lose staff and committee positions...

...Democratic advisers James Carville and Stan Greenberg urged Clinton to invite comparison with Reagan and the 1980s—a comparison he could not withstand successfully...

...Republicans gained 472 state legislative seats...

...How fierce a fundraiser will Congressman John Dingell (D-Mich...

...Much of what has been viewed by the establishment of the last forty years as "hardball politics" is nothing more than the solicitation of bribes...

...The Clinton administration and leading committee chairmen squeezed millions out of corporate America for the 1994 elections...

...CI The American Spectator January 1995 79...

...Now the Democrats will not be able to continue the Tony Coelho strategy: extorting campaign cash from businesses terrified of what could be inserted into the hidden recesses of a large tax or regulatory bill...

...unopposed to become majority leader of the 104th Congress, argues that there are two central reasons this election was "a strenuous reaffirmation of the Reagan revolution...

...Passage of A-to-Z legislation that would allow open rules to strip out pork-barrel spending, enactment of the rule urged by John Boehner of Ohio to forbid earmarking of projects for specific districts, and restrictions on franked mail will all weaken liberal Democrats' survival stratagems in moderate and conservative districts...

...Tom Bliley (R-Vir...

...Mario Cuomo sent his statewide approval ratings plummeting...

...Democrats attacked the contract, but could not do so without admitting that Republicans had a political agenda they wanted to share with America, while the Democrats and the Clinton White House did not...

...Clinton's rambling press conference the day after the election floated the argument that voters were so disappointed in congressional failure to pass Clinton's liberal agenda that they gave both houses to the Republicans...

...For his bid to succeed, Dole cannot be seen as less aggressive than the House in confronting Clinton and pushing a conservative agenda...

...A majority could "foresee a time in the near future" when they would have to disobey the law to protect their constitutional rights...

...A good book that deserves a wide audience...

...only 8 percent cited his support from the religious right...

...Republicans have promised to cut House staff by more than a third, and because Democrats have Grover G. Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform...

...Pro-term-limit groups spent more than $1.5 million in independent, issue-oriented ads...

...voters gave the Republican Party 32 percent agreement "all or most of the time," while the Christian Coalition and the Democratic Party roughly tied at 17 and 19 percent respectively...

...New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani's endorsement of Gov...

...The nation's 22,000 lobbying groups now need Republicans...

...The National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and the Christian Coalition worked hard to get out their voters...

...The overthrow also touched state houses nationwide...

...only the weakest and least capable buckled...

...All patronage jobs in the Capitol, such as elevator operators who manually run the automatic elevators, may be eliminated or given to Republicans...

...Some ads reminded Washington state voters that the Democratic Party was leading the fight against term limits, which led to the defeat of six Democratic congressmen—the biggest state loss in the nation...

...But in 1994, Reagan's ideas and a party that embodied them—at all levels of government and in all regions of the country—won on policy, not personality...

...Defeated congressmen, state legislators, and their former staffers, meanwhile, cannot simply jump into corporate lobbyingjobs and trade associations...

...Reporters at CBS, NBC, ABC, and other establishment media outlets know only one-half of Washington—the Democratic half no longer in power...

...Term-limits activists also strengthened Republican candidates...

...Another key aspect of the Democrats' massive defeat is their loss of committee and subcommittee chairmanships, which radically changes the balance of power in fundraising capability...

...Some dismissed the Republican sweep of the Senate in 1980 as a personal victory for Ronald Reagan...

...Republican tacticians were particularly delighted that Democrats spent $2 million attacking the contract, money thus not available to be spent elsewhere...

...Jonathan Rauch Wall Street Journal O 111...

...In the fourteen states with Republican governors and Republican control of both houses of the state legislature, governors are already committed to passing school choice plans in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Jersey...

...Social conservatives achieved forty-five prolife/pro-family victories in the House, as well as eight Senate seats and sevengovernorships...

...Some Democrats have tried to argue that the election shows signs of division within Republican ranks, but this is a faint echo of the disproven argument that the religious right would destroy Republican chances for electoral success...

...And the eighteen state chambers taken over by Republicans will replace Democrat committee staff with Republicans: another 1,000 jobs...

...in Wyoming his counterpart has about 1,000 appointments available...

...One hundred twenty-two of 178 Republican House members participated in a drive to raise $3 million dollars for the NRCC campaign war chest and $3 million for Republican challengers...

...Their second claim—that this was simply an anti-Washington election—could not explain the eleven new Republican governors and the 472-seat gain in state legislatures across the country...

...be in 1996...

...The mid-term election also resulted in a tremendous destruction of human capital...

...Their efforts were energized by the Clinton administration's determination to threaten gun owners and denigrate Christians...

...A Fabrizio McLaughlin and Associates exit poll found that conservatives outnumbered liberals in the electorate by a margin of 44 to 16 percent...

...Only five percent felt the government was too small...

...The contract, they say, allowed the Republicans to take the high ground, forcing the Democrats to come to them at their best possible defensive position...

...Republican candidates were trained to take hard questions about the contract...

...after Alabama's Richard Shelby switched parties, Republicans controlled a 53-47 Senate majority...

...Clinton may continue to abuse regulatory agencies as fundraising tools, but a Republican Congress will have subpoena power, as well as the power of the purse, to stop funding to abusive agencies...

...Democratic Party spokesmen, most notably, have failed to assure a shaken establishment that they'll be back in 1996 to recapture both houses...

...The contract, which listed ten major pieces of legislation that Republicans committed to bring up for an open vote within the first hundred days of the 104th Congress, was signed by almost every Republican running for the House of Representatives...

...In New Mexico the new Republican governor can replace 1,250 Democratic appointments...

...understaffed the Republicans over the years, all of these cuts will come from the Democratic side—meaning the loss of another 1,400 jobs...

...Exit polling showed that religious conservatives made up 33 percent of the vote, up from 18 percent in 1988 and 24 percent in 1992...

...continued on page 79) HIGHER O SUPERSTITION The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt "An important and angry book...

...In Virginia, Senator John Warner, who opposed 011ie North and campaigned for Independent candidate Marshall Coleman, was booed offstage at the victory party of the 11th District's Congressman-elect, Tom Davis...

...Arizona defeated opponents of school choice in both houses...

...This tortured explanation did not make sense even to Eleanor Clift or the New York Times...

...Polling showed that the two groups most likely to vote were households with more than one gun in the home and evangelical Christians...

...That's another several thousand jobs...

...Betraying the Republican Party's candidates is no longer a route to success...

...First, they are arguing that the election results show the country does not need term limits—an odd explanation for an election that saw them pass in seven states as well as hundreds of cities...

...The party also gained eight Senate seats on election day...

...It is not modesty restraining them-1996 looks worse fortheir party than 1994...

...Prior to November 8, seventeen states had been under complete Democratic control: a Democratic governor and control of both houses of the state legislature...

...The Democrats' grip on America was broken on Election Tuesday, and the damage inflicted on their party's infrastructure was immense...

...Some Republican strategists have made an analogy with Gettysburg to explain how the contract worked with voters...

...Jeffrey Salmon Commentary "Working scientists pull up the PC attack on science by its roots and shake it hard...

...Opposition to gun control was a key factor in defeating Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, and in winning the Senate seats in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania...

...While Washington continues to wonder what hit it, the grassroots ask why it took so long...

...First, the debate over health care exposed the unrelenting left-wing ideology of the Clinton administration, and turned the 1994 electorate more anti-government than 1992 voters had been...

...Although thirty-five Democratic incumbents lost their seats in the election, only 10 percent of incumbents were defeated...

...John Boehner (R-Ohio), and the three candidates for Republican whip, Tom Delay of Texas, Bob Walker of Pennsylvania, and Bill McCollum of Florida, not only raised money for other candidates but traveled widely...

...The American Spectator January 1995 47 Asked if they believed the fedexal government was "more of a partner or more of an opponent in your pursuit of the American dream," 59 percent of Americans said opponent and only 32 percent, partner...

...The Democrats are now floating two new trial balloons...

...The Democrats will have to fall back on labor unions, big city machines, trial lawyers, and Hollywood for the money...

...The White House's insistence that Bill Clinton's foreign policy success gave him new stature did not translate into domestic political strength...

...In fact, when asked "Which of the following organizations represents your beliefs...

...Dick Armey (R-Tex...

...reportedly raised $500,000 each...

...The loss of fifty-two House members, each with the authority to hire twenty-two congressional staff, means up to 1,144 jobs will be lost to begin with...

...T his massive victory was won by the Republican Party...

...Only three states had full Republican control...

...and Bill Archer (R-Tex...

...If the 472 state legislators defeated by Republicans have only one staffer each, 1,000 Democrats will be looking for work from those defeats...

...Their first explanation—that this was simply a vote against incumbents—was patently untrue: Not a single Republican congressman, senator, or governor was defeated...

...The payoff came November 8, but there's one more thing to remember: As in Eastern Europe five years ago, the real work begins now...

...Arizona, which lost a bid for school choice in 1994 by three votes in the state senate, has re-elected Governor Fife Symington, and elected pro-school choice leader Lisa Graham as the state superintendent of education...

...in fact, his travels through Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota left destruction in his wake...

...This will cost Democrats more jobs than the loss of Congress itself...

...Now only eight states are completely controlled by Democrats, while fifteen are completely controlled by the GOP...

...Freed from that task, Americans refocused their attentions on reducing the size, scope, and power of its own imperial center...

...In 1993, Whitman was the first recipient of similar backing from Republican governors—help provided across state borders within the party...

...Of those who indicated that government was too large, 33 percent thought it should be cut in half...

...knowledge of who's who in the Democratic Party is no longer commercially viable...

...Exit polling by Frank Luntz and Company, commissioned by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, found that 73 percent of voters believed "the federal government is much too large and has too much power...

...Seventeen Democrats won with less than 52 percent of the vote, while another 77 won with less than 55 percent...

...Virginia voters, asked whether religious conservative groups or liberal activist groups presented a bigger threat, feared the liberals more—by a whopping 54 to 25 percent...

...Dozens of Washington careers have depended on the ability of lobbyists to get their calls returned by key staffers for Speaker of the House Tom Foley, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, Senate Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden, as well as other committee chairmen...

...One drastic result of the mid-term elections is a massive loss of Democratic political jobs, estimated nationwide at anywhere between 30,000 and 70,000 positions...

...More subtle shifts will take place in the media, where one can detect that the Washington Times, the conservative Washington paper, now has better sources and access to power than the New York Times or the Washington Post...

...Republicans gained eleven governorships and now hold a 30-18 majority of state executives (with one undecided and one independent), their first majority since 1969...

...The point to remember is that until Communism began its collapse in 1989, American energies had been largely focused in fighting the Evil Empire, giving statist Washington plenty of cover...

...The GOP gained strength in every region of the nation: Republicans won a net increase of at least 52 seats in the House of Representatives, giving the GOP a 230203 advantage—a majority for the first time in forty years...

...nor can he allow Gingrich or Phil Gramm to become the leader of conservative initiatives...

...Mario Cuomo's loss of the governorship of New York alone will cost Democrats more than 12,000 patronage jobs—some estimates suggest two and three times this number...

...failed in the Senate in 1981—are belied by the aggressive start of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey in the House, and by the presidential aspirations of Bob Dole...

...Republican governors William Weld, John Engler, Tommy Thompson, and Christine Todd Whitman helped Republican candidates in New York, Connecticut, and Maryland by sending letters endorsing their tax cut proposals, giving greater credibility to GOP challengers and their tax cut platforms...

...Jennifer Dunn, a freshman from the state of Washington, was a leader in this effort...