[WhonyGataxott]

Philadelphia Inquirer:http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front..._election.html

Republican leaders acknowledge that they may lose the House in 2012 if their prescription of tax cuts and less government spending does not deliver. But likely incoming Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) also claimed a mandate, saying Tuesday's result was a "repudiation" of Washington's direction under the Democrats.

Media exit polls taken Tuesday, however, are replete with evidence that many voters were not wild about the GOP, either. For instance, 58 percent of independents surveyed said they viewed Democrats unfavorably, while 57 percent said they had negative views of Republicans.

Voters in the polls were divided on top GOP policy priorities - 48 percent said Congress should repeal the Obama administration's health-care overhaul, but 47 percent said it should be kept as is or expanded. And 39 percent said Washington's top priority should be to reduce the budget deficit, while 37 percent said it should be to spend more money to create jobs.

"We are still really the 50-50 nation we showed ourselves to be in the 2000 election, and all of the waves and national events are really only pushing us from one party to another," said Lara M. Brown, assistant professor of political science at Villanova University. "At the end of the day," she said, "no party has dominance, and no party should read these wins as ideological mandates to pursue their partisan agenda."

The nation has gone through such stretches before; indeed, some historians are reminded of the Gilded Age of the 1890s, when corruption, along with financial and social upheavals, led to wide swings in House control. Eventually, the era gave rise to the progressive movement.

...

In 1894, the GOP won a landslide midterm, picking up 135 seats in a smaller House (it then had 357 seats, instead of today's 435). Unemployment ranged from 12 percent to 18 percent, and voters blamed Democratic President Grover Cleveland and his party's congressional leaders.

But two years later, the GOP lost 48 seats, even as Republican William McKinley won the presidential race. In the 1910 midterms, the Democrats took advantage of infighting between liberal and conservative wings of the GOP to pick up 57 seats. They grabbed 82 more and the presidency two years later.