Just when the heat on the Obama presidency seemed to be peaking, Pennsylvania’s senior senator suddenly became a Democrat. It hasn’t been since Sen. Jim Jeffords’ switch gave Senate Democrats a majority in 2001 that a major defection has happened, and Republican soul searching has dominated the news cycle ever since.

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum argues for a bigger GOP tent. Referring to the two Republican senators from Maine, Frum argues, “It ought to be obvious to any Republican why we need to make room for politicians like Snowe and Collins in our party. It’s not like we have so many votes that we can afford to throw them away.” Frum worries that while some Republicans are more concerned about the “quality” of Republican elected officials, “quantity” is required to govern. Meanwhile, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor has started a new group, the National Council for a New America, to lead the GOP to a new understanding with the American voter, and perhaps to electoral success.

It is certainly amusing to many Democrats to watch the Republican hand wringing. “I wonder if this is how Republicans felt all those years,” some must wonder, recalling the Democratic Party’s own recent periods of strategic chaos, when Karl Rove’s claims of an enduring Republican majority seemed just a little too plausible. David Brooks calls the jubilation among Democrats “the joy of pulverization,” of scoring another touchdown when you’re already up by four. For Republicans, he calls it “demoralization piled on top of demoralization.”

Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey who had a famously unhappy tenure as President Bush’s EPA Administrator, penned a New York Times column lamenting one-party control of Washington.

To the extent we lose more members of the Republican Party, we lose what ability we have left to affect policy, and that is going to be devastating to our nation. Our democracy desperately needs two vibrant parties.

This is about much more than the switch of one senator or even than the potential 60-vote supermajority Democrats may now soon achieve. After all, power is fleeting and the political winds fickle; laws enacted by one Congress can be overturned by the next. As Whitman wondered in her column, what will happen when one party holds such sway over the two political branches of our federal government? While it is easy to see why this is a bad development for Republicans, Democrats may find that Specter’s switch raises as many questions for them as it answers.

The last two experiences of one-party dominance – Republicans from 2003 to 2007, and Democrats from 1993 to 1995 – serve as cautionary tales.

The period of Democratic dominance in Congress during the first two years of President Clinton’s term was followed infamously by the electoral drubbing in 1994 that opened the door on nearly a decade of Republican majorities in Congress. Even prior to Clinton, Democratic majorities in both chambers during President Carter’s term preceded a Republican resurgence lasting three successive presidential elections.

Republicans’ dominance in the two Congresses on either side of the 2004 Bush reelection campaign did include the overhaul of Medicare, but also included a failed attempt at Social Security reform. The two elections since the four years of Republican dominance, 2006 and 2008, have seen tidal waves in favor of Democratic candidates: during the 109th Congress starting in 2005, Republicans began with 232 House members and 55 Senate members. Republicans now hold only 178 House seats and, with Specter’s switch, only 40 seats in the Senate.

If the opportunities for Democrats to advance their agenda seem to be many, so are the perils. Recent history tells us that sometimes the best path to losing power is having too much of it in the first place.

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