Republican Resurgence: is It Real?

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Noah Rothman, at the conservative website “Hot Air,” yesterday reported that:

With [Republican Martha] McSally’s victory [in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional district], the 2014 midterm elections have officially concluded. At the start of the 114th Congress, Republicans will enjoy their largest majority in the House of Representatives since prior to the Great Depression and the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt with 247 members. The last time the GOP enjoyed that large of a majority was the 71st Congress in 1929 and 1930.

In the Senate, the GOP will be in an almost equally unparalleled position of power. “Republicans will control 54 out of 100 seats,” the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted. “That’s tied for their fourth-highest number of seats since that same 1929-30 Congress, but the larger three were majorities of 55 seats — i.e. only one more seat.”

Combined with the GOP’s dominance at the state legislative level (Republicans control 56% of seats in the legislatures, the highest number since 1920), and the party’s control of 31 of 50 [62% of] gubernatorial mansions, the Republican Party will be in the strongest position it has seen since prior to the popularization of Democratic progressivism.

“The last time the GOP clearly had more [top elected official] power than today was in the early 1920s, when it controlled more than 70% of governorships, 69% of the House and more than 60% of Senate seats,” Blake observed.

Rothman further noted that “either through retirements or lost elections, half of the U.S. senators who voted for Obamacare, all of whom were Democrats, will be gone in 2015.”

In the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama’s 2012 election triumph, we shared a concern that the Obama political machine might "annihilate" the GOP in 2014 by winning the 17 seats Democrats then needed to control the U.S. House. Whoops. Shows the danger of making next-election predictions based upon what just happened. Political parties can and do perform like “persons,” regularly making mistakes and, conversely, learning from them.