by Ken O'Steen
When Lila still hadn’t returned, I put the point of the pen back onto the paper and continued to write. Ten minutes later I had written:
The 1994 Republican Takeover of the House and Senate
Rather than fully support, successfully amend, and at election time bravely defend the plan for universal health insurance proposed by the Clinton administration in 1993, congressional Democrats took off running from the issue faster than Road Runner on the lam from Wile E. Coyote. After voting for Clinton’s enormously successful Budget Plan of 1993, with its tax increase on the fattest two percent of cats in these United States, which would spur a roaring economy, result in a balanced budget and eventually a budget surplus, predictably timorous congressional Democrats descended into wet noodledom, and got their gonads handed to them on a platter in 1994.
They were ultimately outsmarted and outmaneuvered by Republican Minority Whip Gingrich the Newt, which tells you something about the prowess and the constitution of congressional Democrats of that time. In all fairness to them, however, the Republicans had enough Newt-inspired, laundered, but still soiled Republican political action committee ducats to slime Democrats in five countries the size of the United States. Furthermore the insurance companies, after their tight escape from the jaws of human decency plowed enough insurance money into the election to choke a chubby actuary. One of Newt’s brain-storm-trooping tactics was to attach nefarious buzzwords to fine, upstanding words, such as: liberal and Democratic. For example, “The Democratic health plan is another collectivist, tax-hiking, mother and father raping proposal to place god-fearing Mid-western housewives into sadomasochistic reorientation camps.”
Two more factors. No minor matter when it came to the targeted pigeons (voters) apparently, was that every channel on the radio dial was for the first election territory under the occupation of broadcasters to the right of Rommel, proclaiming that not only was the Democratic Party intent on the brutal demise of all that was good and holy, but that God himself, should the Democrats retain control of congress, would be fitted with cement shoes and thrown summarily into the Hudson River. Naturally old staples like the mendacity of the poor, and their appetite for stealing your kiddies’ lunch money before your youngsters can fill their bellies was on the Hit Parade. And the Republicans came up with a number they liked to call: The Contract for America. It was offered with the sincerity of a car salesman ten minutes before closing on Christmas Eve. One of its strongly trumpeted promises was to limit the number of terms members of Congress could serve… a bluff they had used to bait hapless, defensive Democrats for countless years. Naturally, such limits, once Republicans were comfy in their majority went the way of Amelia Earhart. But too many voters were buying.
The people are terribly stupid.
The couple who had come into the gallery were standing smack in front of “Death Takes a Chevrolet,” which meant their backsides now were smack in front of me. And still no Lila? Well, Onward Christian Soldiers.