House 2014: Handicapping The “Drive to 245” - How plausible is the GOP’s lower chamber goal?

Sabato's Crystal Ball reports:

A Republican at the end of 1928 could look back on the previous few decades and smile: His party was quite clearly the dominant force in American politics. Starting in 1896, Republicans had held the White House for 24 of 32 years, interrupted only by the GOP split that helped Democrat Woodrow Wilson get elected in 1912.* Another Republican, Herbert Hoover, was about to stretch that streak in the White House to 28 of 36 years.

In the House, Republicans also had held control for 24 of 32 years, and Hoover’s 444-electoral vote landslide in 1928 boosted the House GOP majority to 270 seats, a Republican edge whose size was only eclipsed by the 302-member Republican caucus elected in 1920 (the House expanded to its present 435 seats in 1913).

Things appeared so bleak for the Party of Jackson that “there was real fear at the time that the Democrats would follow the Whigs into oblivion,” according to the recently deceased prolific historian Robert Remini in The House: The History of the House of Representatives.

Of course, the stock market crashed in 1929. Democrats would recapture the House two years later — and hold it for 60 of the next 64 years.

Since that 270-seat Republican majority, the high water mark for the GOP in the lower chamber was 246 seats, achieved in 1946. That majority was wiped out two years later in President Harry Truman’s surprising reelection triumph. As of now, the GOP House majority — virtually assured of continuing for at least one more cycle — stands at 234 seats. A gain of 13 seats would put the Republicans at 247, eclipsing 1946 and delivering the biggest GOP majority since the Roaring ‘20s.

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