#381 The Elections of 1994 (Midterm Elections Series #4)

About this episode

In 1994, the Republican Party took both houses of Congress for the first time in more than four decades, defeating a Democratic Party that, just two years earlier, had pulled off a "trifecta" (winning both houses of Congress and the Presidency in a single election), and ushering in an era of GOP congressional control that would persist into the 21stcentury. How did the party that had spent most of the post-WWII era on the sidelines reemerge as a political force in the 1990s? Why did the majority of southern voters support Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction? And why did the man of the moment – Newt Gingrich – fall from grace even as his party's star continued to rise? In this episode, Nicole Hemmer join us to dig into the political revolution that remade the Republican Party and forever changed politics. Nicole Hemmer is the director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency and associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She is also the author of multiple books, including Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s. If you enjoy this episode, make sure to check out her podca