Midterm Election Results Recall Earlier Defeats for the Right

‘I feel as sure as everyone except conceivably Gerald Ford that there will be a slaughter of Republicans, the innocent along with the guilty,” senior editor wrote in National Review in the fall of 1974. He gleaned this in part from a two-week road trip he embarked upon with wife Marcia. The trip’s purpose centered around pleasure (“to enjoy the wild west wind”) and business (“check on our country and countrymen”). He explained, “We drove about 2,500 miles, mostly in the mid-Atlantic states.”

Three days after he filed that article, Republicans lost a total of four Senate seats, 45 House seats, and five governorships, including from such population-rich states as California and New York. Given that Democrats already owned majorities in both houses of Congress and among the governors, the shellacking — to borrow the peculiar word used 36 years later by the president on the receiving end of a similar midterm defeat — in a sense rivaled what Republicans experienced this week.

About the Author

Daniel J. Flynn

Daniel J. Flynn, the author of The Man Who Invented Conservatism: The Unlikely Life of Frank S. Meyer, is an American Spectator senior editor, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, and YouTuber @RightWingWilderness.

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‘I feel as sure as everyone except conceivably Gerald Ford that there will be a slaughter of Republicans, the innocent along with the guilty,” senior editor wrote in National Review in the fall of 1974. He gleaned this in part from a two-week road trip he embarked upon with wife Marcia. The trip’s purpose centered around pleasure (“to enjoy the wild west wind”) and business (“check on our country and countrymen”). He explained, “We drove about 2,500 miles, mostly in the mid-Atlantic states.”

Three days after he filed that article, Republicans lost a total of four Senate seats, 45 House seats, and five governorships, including from such population-rich states as California and New York. Given that Democrats already owned majorities in both houses of Congress and among the governors, the shellacking — to borrow the peculiar word used 36 years later by the president on the receiving end of a similar midterm defeat — in a sense rivaled what Republicans experienced this week.