Five Conservative Comebacks Side by Side, and the Ingredient They All Shared

Political analysts love a theory of everything. The comeback was about money. The comeback was about one charismatic leader. The comeback was about a wave that nobody could have predicted and nobody could have stopped. Each theory is tidy, each gets a segment on television, and each runs into the same problem when you check it against the record.

So let us check it against the record. Five times in the last sixty years, the American right came back from a position that looked hopeless: 1966, 1980, 1994, 2010 and 2014. This post sets them in one table, defines the terms we will use to compare them, and argues for a conclusion that is less exciting than a theory of everything and a good deal more useful.

The thesis

The thesis is this: the common ingredient in every one of these comebacks was a clear argument against an overreaching majority, delivered by new candidates and carried by organized volunteers. Not money, though money helped. Not a single leader, though some of the comebacks had one. An argument, a roster and an organization.

To see why that holds, we need to define five terms.

1. The provoking policy. The specific act of the governing majority that gave the opposition its case.
2. The governing idea. What the comeback's winners said they would do instead, in a form a voter could repeat.
3. The coalition. The mix of voters who delivered the result.
4. The organizing vehicle. The institution or network that turned a mood into a campaign.
5. The record. The gains in seats, and what the winners did with the power they won.

The table

I have kept the cells short on purpose, and each of them could fill a post. In fact several already have. The 1966 story is told in Two Years After Goldwater, the 1966 Midterm That Put the Right Back in It, the build-up to 1980 in The Ideas Came First, How Magazines and Think Tanks Built the 1980 Landslide, the road to 1994 in Before the Contract, How Backbench Speeches to an Empty Chamber Built a Majority, the House rules of 2011 in When the House Read the Constitution Aloud, and the Rule That Stayed After 2011, and the Senate of 2014 in From Lost Senate Races to a Majority, What 2014 Learned From 2010 and 2012.

What the table says

Read down each column and look for the pattern.

The provoking policy is always an act of governing, never an act of the opposition. In 1966 it was a government that had grown faster than its promises. In 1980 it was an economy that the standard theories could not explain. In 1994 it was a major tax increase passed without a single Republican vote, and a health-care plan that did not pass. In 2010 and 2014 it was a health-care law and a stimulus law. The right did not create these grievances. It named them.

The governing idea is always simple. A voter can state it in a sentence: cut the rates, restore order, pass these ten things, repeal and restrain, check the executive. That is not an accident. A complicated message is a message that fails to survive contact with a voter who is busy. And every one of the ideas was an argument about the reach of government, which is a theme that holds the coalition together, because it appeals to the small businessman, the churchgoer, the veteran and the family at the same time.

The coalition changed from decade to decade but shared a core. In each case it included voters who were not reliably Republican and had found a reason to be that year. A comeback is not the party's base showing up. A party's base is the floor. A comeback is the floor plus the people who have decided that the majority has gone too far.

The organizing vehicle is where the differences are greatest, and the most interesting. Each comeback had a different engine. In 1966 it was the Goldwater volunteers. In 1980 it was a network of magazines, think tanks and church groups. In 1994 it was a band of backbenchers using television. In 2010 it was thousands of local citizen groups with no national chairman. In 2014 it was a party committee recruiting experienced candidates. The vehicle changed, and a vehicle was always there. No comeback happened in a vacuum.

The record shows what each did with its win. It is mixed, and I would be a poor analyst if I pretended otherwise. In 1981 and 1996 the winners passed major, lasting laws. In 2011 and 2015 they passed some things and ran into a veto pen. The pattern is that a comeback wins an election and then has to govern with the president that the electorate gave it, and the lasting results are mostly in the cases where the new majority controlled more than one lever.

The strongest case for the other theories

The debater's approach requires me to state the rival theories at their strongest, so here they are.

Money. A party with resources can recruit, advertise and organize. The right's comebacks coincided with the growth of donor networks, from the small donors of 1964 to the outside groups of 2010. Surely money is the common thread.

A leader. Reagan carried 1966 and 1980. Gingrich carried 1994. A single figure gives a movement a face. Surely a leader is the common thread.

The wave. The president was a Democrat in all five of these years, and the 1966, 1994, 2010 and 2014 elections were midterms, which punish the president's party; the swing was simply the pendulum, and a party that happened to be on the right side of it takes the credit. Surely the wave is the common thread.

Each of these has something to it. Here is the answer, in numbered points.

1. Money is a multiplier, not a cause. Every campaign needs funds, and the losers in 1964 and in 2012 had them too. In 2012, the Republicans had donors, outside groups and a presidential nominee with resources, and the party lost two Senate seats on a favorable map. Money helps an argument travel. It cannot supply the argument, any more than a bigger envelope makes a dull letter worth opening. And the theory of the lone charismatic leader has a related flaw: it is the one theory that every campaign manager secretly hopes is true, because it lets him blame the candidate.
2. There is no single leader across the five cases. There was a face in 1966, in the form of Reagan, and in 1980. Gingrich was a leader in 1994, though most of the work was done by dozens of members over a decade. In 2010 there was no national leader of the movement, and its strength was precisely that it was local. In 2014 the heroes were candidates in a dozen states, not one man. A theory that works in three of five cases is a tendency.
3. The wave explains the opening and not the use of it. The 1966, 1994, 2010 and 2014 elections were midterms with a president of the other party, and I discuss the penalty in Why the President's Party Almost Always Loses the Midterm, and the Exceptions. But the penalty is a general feature, and the comeback is a specific result. The party that wins the largest share of a wave is the one that has candidates and an argument ready, and 2012 proves it: no wave, no gain.
4. The common factor survives all three objections. In each of the five years the winning side had something to say, someone to say it and a group to carry it. Remove any one of the three and the year looks like 2012.

The controllable and the uncontrollable

Now the useful part. If the ingredients are an argument, a roster and an organization, the next question is which of them a minority can control, because a strategy that depends on things you cannot affect is a prayer.

What a minority cannot control:

1. The majority's overreach. The provoking policy belongs to the governing party. A minority can point it out. It cannot make the majority overreach, and a prudent majority will not.
2. The calendar. Two-year House terms and staggered Senate terms set the rhythm, and the next election is when it is. That is by constitutional design: Article I, Section 2 provides for members "chosen every second Year by the People of the several States," and the voters, not the minority, decide when to use the clock.
3. The economy and events. Stagflation helped the right in 1980. A recession can hurt it. The minority is a spectator.

What a minority can control:

1. The argument. It can decide what to say, and keep saying it, in a form a voter can repeat.
2. The candidates. It can recruit early, vet carefully and run primaries so that the strongest nominee is the one on the ballot. The 2014 contrast with 2010 and 2012 is the proof.
3. The organization. It can build lists, volunteers and local groups in the lean years, when nobody is paying attention. That is the lesson of 1966.
4. The patience. A minority can decide to stay in the fight. The 1994 comeback took eleven years from the first floor speeches. The 1980 comeback took twenty-five years from the founding of a magazine.

Notice how the two lists are balanced. The things a minority cannot control are the things that make a comeback possible. The things it can control are the things that make a comeback happen. A party that understands the difference spends its time on the second list and waits for the first.

What the winners did with it

A word of sober advice, since a comeback is not the end of the story. The winners of 1980 and 1994 passed major and lasting laws because they had enough of the government to do it: in 1981 a President and a Senate, in 1996 a President who signed what Congress sent. The winners of 2011 and 2015 had the House or the Senate and not the White House, and they learned the limits of divided government, which I discuss in Divided Government Again, What the Constitution Gives a President Facing It.

There is a larger point here, and it is the kind a Founding-era mind would appreciate. Madison argued in Federalist 10 that a large republic would make it hard for any faction to seize the whole government, and that the way to win is by persuading a majority, not by overpowering it. A comeback is the American system working as intended: a faction that has lost makes its case, builds a coalition and wins, and then the system forces it to govern with the other branches. The result is slow, and that is the design.

The sixth case

For completeness, the 1946 comeback, told in Had Enough? The 1946 Midterm That Ended Sixteen Years in the Wilderness, fits the pattern as well: a policy the voters could see in the grocery store, a two-word argument, a class of new candidates. It also supplies the warning. A majority won on an argument must then win on a record, and the one that loses its next election has not understood what it was given.

Let me close with an honest limit. Five cases are not a law of nature. I am not claiming that a party with an argument, candidates and an organization always wins. I am claiming that, in the cases we have, a party without all three did not. The correlation is not perfect, and I would not stake the republic on it. But if I were advising a minority, I would tell it to stop looking for the magic ingredient and to start building the three ordinary ones.

The case in brief

1. In 1966, 1980, 1994, 2010 and 2014, the right came back from the minority, and the common ingredient was a clear argument against an overreaching majority, new candidates and organized volunteers.
2. The provoking policies, from the Great Society to the health-care law, were acts of the majority, and the governing ideas were simple enough for a voter to repeat.
3. Money, a single leader and a midterm wave each explain part of the story, but none appears in all five cases, and 2012 shows that favorable conditions without candidates and an argument produce no gain.
4. A minority cannot control the majority's overreach, the calendar or the economy, but it can control its argument, its candidates, its organization and its patience.
5. A comeback wins an election and then must govern with the president the voters chose, which is the Constitution's design.

What you can do: pick one of the five years, read the matching post in this series, and write down the one organizing vehicle that made it work, then ask which local group in your own county could play that role.