The Week

Rumor has it that when Bill Clinton learned the FDA had approved a genetically altered tomato that ripens better and remains firm for picking, he asked a state trooper to invite her to his room.

President Clinton is still working his magic. The GOP captured an overwhelmingly Democratic Oklahoma congressional district when Frank Lucas, a Republican state representative, beat Dan Webber, a former aide to Senator David Boren, by eight points. Mr. Webber stretched as far right as he could, taking an anti-tax pledge, opposing an employer mandate, even knocking his former boss for voting for the Brady Bill. But, thanks to Mr. Clinton, “New Democrat” is now an old act. The GOP streak then continued in the late William Natcher’s district in Kentucky, where Republican Ron Lewis so effectively clamped Mr. Clinton around the neck of his Democratic opponent that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee started explaining before the results were in why it lost the seat, which Democrats had held for 129 years. All this is the acceleration of a historical trend toward the GOP in the South, where Republican gains have prompted retiring Representative Roy Rowland, a Georgia Democrat, to predict: “The House will be majority Republican by the year 2000 and maybe before that.” Republican mayors in New York and Los Angeles, governors in Virginia and New Jersey, congressmen in formerly yellow-dog districts—in some ways, it’s a shame Mr. Clinton has to go.

Rumor has it that when Bill Clinton learned the FDA had approved a genetically altered tomato that ripens better and remains firm for picking, he asked a state trooper to invite her to his room.

President Clinton is still working his magic. The GOP captured an overwhelmingly Democratic Oklahoma congressional district when Frank Lucas, a Republican state representative, beat Dan Webber, a former aide to Senator David Boren, by eight points. Mr. Webber stretched as far right as he could, taking an anti-tax pledge, opposing an employer mandate, even knocking his former boss for voting for the Brady Bill. But, thanks to Mr. Clinton, “New Democrat” is now an old act. The GOP streak then continued in the late William Natcher’s district in Kentucky, where Republican Ron Lewis so effectively clamped Mr. Clinton around the neck of his Democratic opponent that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee started explaining before the results were in why it lost the seat, which Democrats had held for 129 years. All this is the acceleration of a historical trend toward the GOP in the South, where Republican gains have prompted retiring Representative Roy Rowland, a Georgia Democrat, to predict: “The House will be majority Republican by the year 2000 and maybe before that.” Republican mayors in New York and Los Angeles, governors in Virginia and New Jersey, congressmen in formerly yellow-dog districts—in some ways, it’s a shame Mr. Clinton has to go.