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Midterms Past: The ’66 Parallel
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| Contributor | particleman |
| Last Edited | particleman Apr 30, 2010 07:15pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Author | Rhodes Cook |
| News Date | Friday, April 30, 2010 12:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | For months now, this election has been compared to that of 1994, when Republicans scored huge gains and won both houses of Congress. It is a decent model. But given the recent passage of health care reform – something that did not happen in ’94 – this might be a good occasion to look at another midterm election for instruction, that of 1966.
As now, it was a time of bold presidential initiatives buttressed by large Democratic majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill. But the mid-1960s was also a period of growing unrest – with an economy going off the tracks, an overseas war that was escalating, and a president whose approval rating was sinking after starting around 70% at the time of his inauguration.
Republicans scored large gains across the country in the midterm election of 1966. They were not enough to win control of either house of Congress. But the GOP comeback did restore the Republican “brand” – badly tarnished by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater’s landslide loss in 1964. Few pundits then thought the Republican Party could make such a quick turnaround. The GOP was routed at all levels in 1964 – in large part due to Goldwater’s full-throated conservatism and a large sympathy vote cast in honor of Democratic President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated in November 1963.
In many instances, Republicans regained terrain they had lost in the ’64 landslide. Roughly one-third of the 71 Democratic House freshmen elected that year were ousted in 1966. Virtually all of them had voted for Medicare and gave broad support to other presidential initiatives. With their departure, the curtain essentially came down on Johnson’s “Great Society.”
Altogether, Republicans added 47 seats in the House, three seats in the Senate and eight governorships in 1966. That brought the party’s totals to roughly where they are today. |
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