Could a Republican Tsunami help the President?

The spin doctors on the left have already gotten started. Now that a significant GOP victory in the November elections is nearly assured, we are already hearing that President Obama might actually benefit from such a result.

Many are pointing out that President Clinton may have been helped by the Republican tidal wave of 1994. Things improved so much after the GOP took control of Congress that Mr. Clinton easily won reelection in 1996. Yet how much of that is due to the actions of the then President, or of the electorate; indeed, of the GOP itself?

On a further yet similar vein, there are those who note that the President's job approval rating went up in the year after November 1994. The irony here is that what we had in effect was a Democratic president riding on the coattails of Republican work. For instance, there was far greater spending restraint (about 2 percent per year) AFTER the 1994 elections than before, when spending was growing at around a 10% pace (when the Democrats controlled Congress). In short, Mr. Clinton was the lucky recipient of the initiatives of the opposition rather than from his own backers. Combine that with the purely psychological effect that as the nation was doing better, the President automatically deserved credit (a shallow thought, to be sure) and that the GOP ran a weak candidate in 1996, it should not be a surprise that Clinton won reelection. So it must be stressed that he won, not on his laurels, but because of Republican ideals coupled with a confused electorate.

The real lesson here in that the GOP must offer a solid candidate in 2012, after doing what good it can in Congress in the next two years, in order to relegate President Obama to much deserved one term status. Can the Republicans learn themselves from the history of 1994: that it is perhaps more critical to win the minds of the people as the offices of state. If that can be done, we will see a Republican majority in Washington for a long, long time.