The Former Confederacy & Modern American Politics, Part Twenty-Five

The Republican election victory of 1994 was propelled to some extent by what the GOP called, "The Contract With America," a statement of ideas the Republicans promised to vote on in the House of Representatives, if voters made them the majority party in the House. The ideas all had varying degrees of majority support in polls conducted by Republican congressional leaders, primarily Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Dick Armey of Texas. Some of the major proposals were: to require a balanced federal budget, unless approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress; major reform to welfare programs; anti-crime legislation to provide money to states and local communities for law enforcement and to provide for the building of prisons; proposals to give tax credits for children, to reform parts of the legal system and to cut the number of committees in the House of Representatives.

The new Republican controlled House of Representatives elected Newt Gingrich of Georgia as Speaker of the House. Gingrich had been born in Pennsylvania and even lived in Europe for a time, before his family moved to Georgia when he was in high school. Dick Armey of Texas was chosen by Republicans as their majority leader in the House. Like Gingrich, Armey was not an original Southerner, as he had been born and raised in North Dakota, and he eventually moved to Texas when he was in his mid 20s. Tom Delay of Texas was elected as the House Majority Whip. Delay was born in Texas, but he spent a number of his childhood years in Venezuela, where his father was employed in the oil industry. He returned to Texas for much of his teenage education and beyond.  

So now came the election of 1996, as Bill Clinton ran for reelection. *

* For some of the lead-up to the election, here is the link to another article I did covering that general time period. I will do a more detailed view of the election and the former Confederate states'  involvement in my next article in this series: http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2012/11/its-about-coalitions-not-purity-part_28.html 

WORD HISTORY:
Core-This word is related to "cardio," a prefix form borrowed by English from Latin, which had borrowed it from Greek. It goes back to Indo European "ker(d)," which meant, "heart." This gave its Old Italic offspring "kor(d)," which then passed to Latin as "cor." This passed to Latin-based Old French as "coeur" (Norman dialect "cuer?"), which continued the meaning, "heart," but also "center, middle," often used of some fruits and vegetables, especially apples. English borrowed the word circa 1400.