Ladies and Gentlemen, despite polling data to the contrary, the "Tea Party" surge toward more Conservative and/or Libertarian government is over, at least according to E.J. Dionne. Democrats in Congress have discovered their way to victory in 2012, which is to change their previous definition of "the rich" from those making $250,000 or more to those making $1 million or more. That, combined with the energized movement in the streets and a President who has found his Progressive voice along with a reluctance by GOP stars to enter the fray and the domination of the nominating process by candidates who cannot win, should lead to a rerversal of fortune that will carry Obama and the Democrats to victory.

Are you buying it? As for me, I am not.

My reasoning rests on the fact that, as Mark Twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Voters tend to punish the party in power for bad times. After the Panic of 1893, an economic dislocation very similar to the one we are experiencing today, voters routed the Democrats from Congress in the 1894 midterms and then elected a Republican President in 1896. In fact, the fallout from the 1893 financial panic and resulting recession lasted far longer than the recession itself (which lasted approximately 5 years). The GOP dominated national politics from 1894 to 1930, controlling the U.S. House for 32 of those 36 years and the White House for 26 of the 36. After the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression the Democrats crushed the GOP in successive elections in 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936 and went on to a decades-long period of dominance.

Despite the vicissitudes of the day-to-day political campaign, I expect that the 2010 election may very well be just the first in a series of GOP victories that will lead to a period of Republican dominance.