A rare unforced error from Tom Brokaw:
TOM BROKAW: Well it’s a delicate game. You know, the Republicans remember what happened when they were swept in 1994, then shut down the government and were turned out not too long after that.
They probably don’t remember that because it didn’t happen. In fact, the real lesson of 1995 is that the Republicans handled the shutdown about as badly as they could have from a PR perspective, yet gained three Senate seats in the 1996 congressional elections and finished with just four House seats fewer than they had won in 1994.
This is one reason why I wonder whether all this talk about the political danger of a shutdown is overblown.
