Republicans won control of the House in 1994, after forty years in the political wilderness and several decades of trashing the Democratic leaders of the House, and portraying the body itself "as an evil institution." Newt Gingrich and other backbenchers relentlessly and endlessly attacked for over a decade, charging Democrats with misfeasance, malfeasance and nonfeasance - or worse. Republicans promised they would do better if given a chance to lead.

Once in control, the GOP leadership made fundamental changes in the operations of the House. None was more dramatic than eliminating the powerful fiefdoms of committee chairmen who had obtained their posts though seniority alone, under both Democratic- and Republican-controlled Congresses. Under the new Republican rule, chairmen were to be selected by the leadership based on a combination of seniority and willingness to play ball with the leadership.

The idea was that the Speaker would centrally control the House by controlling committee assignments and chairmanships. "Gingrich made it clear from the outset that committee chairs answered to the leadership and, by extension, to the entire Republican Conference," Eilperin writes.

Gingrich and his team imposed a host of other reforms upon taking control in 1994. They ended proxy voting in committees, which required members to actually stay to participate in the mark-up of legislation. They placed term limits on chairpersons, and imposed management and budgetary controls on the operations of the House, while eliminating patronage jobs in the mailroom and similar sinecures.

GOP leaders were more generous than their Democratic predecessors in providing at least a third of committees' budgets to their minority staff. (Democrats operated on a four-to-one or five-to-one ratio.) But they soon literally closed Democrats out of participating in the legislative process. Straight party-line votes prevailed in committees, and to entice special interests to fund the "Republican revolution," many committees all but outsourced their work to the interested parties.

No change was more apparent than the aggressive fundraising from special interest groups by the GOP leadership -- who, in turn, doled out the loot to those lower in the pecking order, and demanded strict party loyalty. Seeing the success of the Republicans in controlling their party, Eilperin shows how Democrats followed suit - becoming just as partisan and money hungry as the their Republican counterparts.

The 1994 shakeup, and the ensuing Republican control, has made the House into a bitter political battleground. To analogize the warring parties to "fight clubs" may add more respectability than is deserved.

Seniority is a matter of rules and tradition, NOT statute. Pelosi will come under intense attack when they start the new term, as will many of the others on your list.

Given the "we're like Republicans, only NICER" strategies of Emmanuel and Hoyer, I fully expect them to ape the Republicans IF they take the House. Loud arguments will be made that the House members must be "careful" not to give the Republicans ammuntion to be used in '08, so that they can't be used against Clinton or whatever other center-right corporatist hacks is pushed forward as the nominee. Genuine progressives will be frozen out, or if they win the battle, the caucus will be so bloodied and torn by the fight that they'll be rendered ineffective.

Your faith in these people is touching. Sadly, there is little or no evidence that it is justified.

"Whenever a Voice of Moderation addresses liberals, its sole purpose is to stomp out any real sign of life." - James Wolcott