The political impact of the 1995-1996 shutdowns was so significant that Roy Meyers, a political science professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, says he is surprised that it has become even a possibility again, given the blame Republicans took in opinion polls at the time. Later in 1996, House Republicans lost nine seats to Democrats and Democratic President Bill Clinton was reelected with an 8.5 percentage point popular vote margin."The federal government's activities are so wide-ranging it would be a tremendous effort to estimate its impact," says Meyers, who has written about the 1995-1996 shutdowns.
Read the whole thing.
2 comments:
The reason why this is even a possibility is that Republicans think they have a better chance of dumping the blame on Obama. The problem for Republicans with the shut down in the 90's is that the blame fell squarely on Republicans. But if they can figure out a way to make Obama and the Democrats the scapegoat here, then there's a good chance they'll do it.
It is very hard to conclude that the Republicans are doing this for any other reason than to destroy the economy for 2012. The Clinton rebound was farther along than the current rebound is, and was coming back from a very minor recession.
Their strategy might actually work.
Post a Comment