Gingrich is setting strategy for the opposition. House Republicans are fully united against the new president's economic priorities. Betsy McCaughey is darkly warning that the government means to take control of doctors. Republicans are calling for tax cuts and inveighing against pork and attacking welfare. To say the strategy bears some similarities to the playbook from the early-90s is to vastly understate the situation. Next thing you know they'll be dressing in flannel and rocking out to Nevermind. I'd largely second Matt Yglesias's explanation of why 2009 is not 1993. In 1992, Clinton won with 43 percent of the vote, the election was dominated by a rare strain of insurgent who combined anti-government populism with a particular hatred of the Bush family, and Democrats lost seats in Congress. There was plenty of reason to believe the moment wasn't propitious for liberalism, and that Clinton had simply benefited from an anti-incumbent fervor. (Though I would say that the changes in Virginia have been more demographic as ideological. It's migration to Northern Virginia, rather than a reaction to Eric Cantor, that's washed away Virginia's red) In 2008, conversely, Obama won with a solid majority and Democrats swept the congressional elections for the second time in a row. There's little evidence of a quiet conservative backlash. That said, it's also not clear what other strategy Republicans can pursue. People are acting as if it's strange that the minority party is opposing the majority's actions. But it's not. The only thing that's strange is that the Senate is so counter-majoritiarian that minority opposition actually matters. American politics is unique in that the minority can block the majority, rather than just complain about it. Which is another reason we should do away with the filibuster. Related: This, meanwhile, is a much more incisive examination of the strategy being pursued by House Republicans than anything I've seen in more legitimate punditry outlets.
