Thursday, November 18, 2004
The Fading Revolution
At Least They're Acting Like A Majority Party...
I've said it before, but this Tom Delay thing really is cementing it for me. When I moved to Washington, DC over ten years ago, I have lucky to be working as part of the revolution that put the GOP into the majority in Congress for the first time in a generation. This revolution was based in part of the GOP publically declaring that it would hold itself to a higher standard and was embodied in the Contract with America, an actual promise to get things done. And we did!
What was even more compelling was that the folks we were working against at the time were entreched, arrogant, out of touch and long serving democrats and republicans who had simply been in Washington way too long. It worked. In the years after the 1994 revolution, there were exciting and productive developments like welfare reform, reducing the size of government and fiscal surpluses. Now the revolutionaries are either gone (Sarborough, Gingrich, Watts, et. al.) or have themselves become the entrenched powers. Sad, but then again that's the way things have worked for more than 200 years. The GOP was most innovative, most effective when it was reaching for the brass ring. Now that they have it, they're no different than the long serving fat cats they ousted.
There's an old saying that politicians eventually will fail their supporters. I couldn't think of a more truer statement.
I've said it before, but this Tom Delay thing really is cementing it for me. When I moved to Washington, DC over ten years ago, I have lucky to be working as part of the revolution that put the GOP into the majority in Congress for the first time in a generation. This revolution was based in part of the GOP publically declaring that it would hold itself to a higher standard and was embodied in the Contract with America, an actual promise to get things done. And we did!
What was even more compelling was that the folks we were working against at the time were entreched, arrogant, out of touch and long serving democrats and republicans who had simply been in Washington way too long. It worked. In the years after the 1994 revolution, there were exciting and productive developments like welfare reform, reducing the size of government and fiscal surpluses. Now the revolutionaries are either gone (Sarborough, Gingrich, Watts, et. al.) or have themselves become the entrenched powers. Sad, but then again that's the way things have worked for more than 200 years. The GOP was most innovative, most effective when it was reaching for the brass ring. Now that they have it, they're no different than the long serving fat cats they ousted.
There's an old saying that politicians eventually will fail their supporters. I couldn't think of a more truer statement.
