Michael Barone: Voters Reject Obama’s Big-Government Ambitions
Uncharted territory. Historic upheaval. The tallies are not all in as this is written. But it seems that the 2010 elections have produced results that are unprecedented in the lifetimes of most readers....
American politics has had no such sharp shifts to one party and then the other for more than half a century — not since the elections of 1946 and 1948, immediately after World War II. And then, as now, very fundamental issues about the size and scope of government were at stake.
After World War II, the issue was whether the United States would move in the same direction that voters in Britain chose when they elected a Labour government that instituted national health insurance and a cradle-to-grave welfare state.
Franklin Roosevelt laid out a similar program in his 1944 State of the Union, and labor unions, bulging with new members due to New Deal and wartime laws, became a mobilizing force for the first time in that year’s presidential election. They sought legislation to provide public housing, federal aid for education, and national health insurance.
The voting public had other ideas. Unions called more strikes in 1946 than in any other year in American history, and that fall voters elected a Republican Congress. That 80th Congress proceeded to abolish wartime rationing and wage and price controls, enact a record tax cut, and pass the Taft-Hartley Act limiting the powers of labor unions....
Read entire article at National Review
American politics has had no such sharp shifts to one party and then the other for more than half a century — not since the elections of 1946 and 1948, immediately after World War II. And then, as now, very fundamental issues about the size and scope of government were at stake.
After World War II, the issue was whether the United States would move in the same direction that voters in Britain chose when they elected a Labour government that instituted national health insurance and a cradle-to-grave welfare state.
Franklin Roosevelt laid out a similar program in his 1944 State of the Union, and labor unions, bulging with new members due to New Deal and wartime laws, became a mobilizing force for the first time in that year’s presidential election. They sought legislation to provide public housing, federal aid for education, and national health insurance.
The voting public had other ideas. Unions called more strikes in 1946 than in any other year in American history, and that fall voters elected a Republican Congress. That 80th Congress proceeded to abolish wartime rationing and wage and price controls, enact a record tax cut, and pass the Taft-Hartley Act limiting the powers of labor unions....