Question: Why did the GOP pick up seats in 78 & 94 after Carter & Clinton stimulus's worked?

I understand Obama wanting the GOP to sign on to this bill because it sounds like in those 2 years the GOP beat the DNC over the head with their "liberal principles" and won seats big time after voting against stimulus packages that worked.

One reason I'm thinking is for the last 40 - 50 years the DNC has had no message discipline and didn't toot their own horn or paint the GOP as obstructionist..... but that's my simplistic thinking.

Why would the GOP pick UP seats AFTER voting AGAINST stimulus's that worked?

Thx in advance for your input.

'Contract for America,' wasn't it? was about hating Clinton, among other things. Of course, dems had no discipline; just had wjc and all of his baggage.

Democrats were wuzzes when challenging Reagan.

The Dems in '94 were almost as scandal plagued as the Repukes were in '06. (Particularly Clinton and Roston-something.)

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during the midterm elections. Clinton's '98 and Shrub's 02 pickups during midterms were major exceptions to the rule, historically. Prior to their gains in those elections the last time this had happened was one of FDR's elections. These dramatic swings regarding which party holds different seats have become less common now that presidents are generally elected w/o substantial coattails. Even with Obama's impressive margin of victory, we did not see the type of massive coattails that such a victory once would have brought- although the gains *were* pretty impressive in the Senate. This is good in a way, though, because it means, particularly regarding the House, that the Democrats do not have too many hard-to-hold seats that we will likely lose in the first midterms

Re: Clinton's stimulus package, the '94 House elections are known in particular for being fought over mostly noneconomic "culture war" issues. The NAFTA vote likely dampened enthusiasm among the Democrats' union base, while issues such as guns and "gays in the military" turned out socially conservative males in higher proportions. While Clinton's stimulus may be considered to have worked, its effects were not seen as much until the period closer to his '96 reelection, and the '94 election was mostly not fought regarding it. (Although, as usual, the Repugs were successfully in convincing a majority of Americans that the Democrats had raised their taxes, when this was not the case at all...)

I don't know enough about the 1978 midterms, but I think the economy was still generally considered to be on shaky ground and was likely unhelpful for Carter. He had won his first term by a close margin, the Democrats had controlled Congress for decades, the "tax revolt" was stirring in that midterm election year= it was just not a promising year for Democrats; it kind of laid the ground for the scariness that would ensue in 1980...

1978 was the year that old fart Jerry Falwell came out of the closet and sold his soul to the Republic Party. It was the first time that the churches rallied en masse against Democrats, and the Whore Press just jumped on the bandwagon. They were in full trash mode against Carter and they kept pumping up "The New Right"

In 1994, the Peronites swung massively back to the GOP, and the Press Whores were just pouring gas on the fires that Tooty Fruity Newtie and Ass Hole Dole made. Clinton made 3 fatal mistakes with gays in the military, the assault weapons ban and the failure to pass health care reform. Clinton played right into their hands.

...regional realignment of the GOP -- Dixiecrats moving out of the Democratic party and into the GOP.

Some of those '78 seats were reversion to the norm. They were normally GOP seats that went Dem in the '74 sweep and weren't going to be long-term gains in any event.

An article in the Boston Globe took up the issue of Democratic losses in 1994 a week before the 2004 presidential election. When a party holds power for too long, Adrian Wooldridge, reporter for The Economist, said in the article, “it grows fat and happy, (and) it also grows corrupt.” The classic example, he pointed out, is the Democratic Party of the 1970s and `80s, which, spoiled by generations of congressional power, “became a party of insiders and deal makers without any sense of the principles they stood for and eventually collapsed” when they were turned out in 1994. (See "Rubbergate")

The more common explanation for the 1994 Republican Revolution, though, is that liberal Democratic ideals — or at least the way they’d been presented since the late 1960s — no longer resonated with the majority of Americans. According to Ruy Teixeira, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Century Foundation, the danger for the dominant party isn’t ideological bankruptcy but ideological drift. “Certainly you can make the argument that, if a party’s far enough away from the mainstream, if they don’t lose they don’t get enough impetus to correct their behavior.”

We saw another prime example of this in 2006 when the GOP, having moved to far to the right, no longer “resonated with the majority of Americans” and they were swept from power. We also saw it in the midterms of 1998 when Republicans lost seats in the house in an apparent backlash against the impeachment of President Clinton.

But 1994 had other factors beyond mere ideological and corruption ones. 1994 saw a large amount of Democratic retirements in house districts that had been trending red for several decades. 1994 was the first nationwide mobilization of anti-abortion forces of the Christian Right. 1994 saw massive southern gerrymandering in house districts that favored the GOP.

In the early 1990s, anti-incumbent sentiments were evident among much of the public. This was exemplified by Bush and the GOP losing the presidency in 1992 then the Democrats (who had controlled congress for most of the last two generations) losing it all. In 1964, over 70 percent of the public said that they could trust Washington to do what was right most or all of the time; by early 1994, only 19 percent expressed similar confidence. In 1964, when asked, “Would you say the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all people,” nearly 40 percent more people agreed with the latter than with the former. In 1992 that sentiment had reversed itself, with 60 percent more people believing that the government was run for the benefit of special interests than those who believed it was run for the benefit of all.

For an excruciatingly detailed insight, read “Court and Country in American Politics: The Democratic Party and the 1994 Election,” by Philip A. Klinkner.

...they might do well in 10

When the economy is good, people think they don't need the government's help and demand lower taxes and less government. When the economy sucks, people start thinking that they need the government's help. Too many voters only think about themselves, which gives the Republicans the advantage.

Groups that tend to vote Republican are more likely to vote in most elections. While lower income and other groups that tend to vote Democrat are more likely to vote in just Presidential elections.