Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) won’t win any Beltway popularity contests with this declaration:

“I don’t want the majority back if we don’t believe anything,” DeMint said on Fox News. “So I think if we want the numbers, if we want the majority, then we’re going to have to stand on some principles that the American people believe in.”

With that I flash back to a Beltway row I witnessed in the early 90s between Newt Gingrich and economist Richard Rahn, then with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce back when the Chamber still believed in low marginal tax rates and not fascism. It was well in advance of the 1994 GOP takeover, maybe a year or more. But Gingrich was loathe to do anything with entitlements, especially Social Security and Medicare, back when there was still time to do something.

“What good is the majority if you don’t do anything with it? Why have political power if you are not going to use it?,” Rahn demanded in front of audience of perhaps two dozen conservative activists. Gingrich rolled his eyes, gave a few “oh c’mons!” and cited how the Democrats would love such an approach.

The message was clear although many in the room denied it for years — when the chips were down, the GOP would choose politics over principle. This is exactly what happened when Gingrich and crew caved to the Washington Monument closure stunt concocted by Bill Clinton in 1995, using an opening provided by Gingrich’s desire to “save” the Medicare trust fund.

The Republican revolution did not last one year and led directly — following Bob Dole’s tottering 1996 campaign, which itself was proof the Old Guard was back in charge of the GOP — to the search for the “Republican Clinton.” A search which landed on the doorstep of one George W. Bush. And Bush then proceeded to land on the United States like a ton of bricks.

From rubble emerged one Barack Obama, who owed his viability to the lurching, content-free — Medicare Part D, thank you Karl Rove — Bush years. But now Obama’s startling overreach has produced a backlash — but against what exactly?

We are about to find out.