Posted on 07/06/2021 6:05:34 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The next election will reflect the results of the 2020 Census. That means a net shift of seats from Democrat-controlled states to those governed by Republicans. As a result, CA, IL, MI, NY, OH, PA, and WV will lose one seat. Winners will be CO, FL, MT, NC, and OR gaining a seat and Texas taking home the grand prize of two new seats.
How this plays out is left up to state legislatures. Republicans control the legislatures in 30 states. In 23 of those, they also control the statehouse. In Kansas and Kentucky, a Democrat governor faces a veto-proof Republican majority in the state legislature. In Democrat-controlled Colorado, redistricting is controlled by a “nonpartisan” commission.
Seven current Democrat congressmen were elected from districts that President Trump carried. Nancy Pelosi is House Speaker by only five votes.
In an ordinary year, the GOP would be considered poised to take back the House. This is not an ordinary year. The nation is becoming disenchanted with Democrat duplicity and malfeasance. The utter goat-f*** that was the 2020 Election has sensitized conservatives to the vulnerabilities in our election system, and 17 states have passed 28 different laws that the looney-left Brennan Center deems to be “restrictive.”
Into this waded the US Supreme Court. On July 1, in a case originating in Arizona known as Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Supreme Court made federal judges meddling in elections much harder.
Brnovich vs. DNC on Scribd
When combined with the decision in Rucho v. Common Cause, which told federal courts that partisan gerrymandering was real and outside the scope of review by federal courts, a lot of potential exists for the GOP to crack open occupied zones within Red States and change the entire playing field, at federal and state level, for the next decade, so it won’t surprise you to find that the loudest voices against doing this are from the GOP.
Kentucky’s GOP congressional delegation entered the redistricting cycle with an unusual request for their state legislative counterparts: leave Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth alone.
The group, which includes Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, wants the state’s Republican supermajority to refrain from cracking Yarmuth’s Louisville-based district into three, even if that might deliver them control of all of Kentucky’s six House seats.
“It’s been my experience in studying history that when you get real cute, you end up in a lawsuit — and you lose it. And then the courts redraw the lines,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.). “So my advice would be to keep Louisville blue.”
This kind of redistricting debate — over how aggressively Republicans should try to eliminate the remaining Democratic enclaves in red states — is playing out in cities across the upper South and Midwest. Local Republicans, eager to grow their numbers in Congress and provide launching pads for ambitious state legislators, might be more inclined to carve up those blue pockets. But others in the GOP are wary of a rapid and unpredictable political realignment that complicates the drawing of new maps — and the threat of the legal behemoth Democrats have assembled to counter them.
Unabashed partisan gerrymandering that was commonplace after 2010 is now giving some Republicans pause. Top party strategists are urging state mapmakers to play it safe and draw lines that can withstand demographic change throughout the decade and lawsuits.
It’s been my experience that negotiating with yourself is something that losers are very good at. In the words of Mark Twain:
“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”
In the case of Kentucky, Yarmuth is not a minority, so he is not going to get shelter from the unconstitutional “majority minority district” nonsense. If the GOP cracks the Democrat district and gets sued, one of two things happen. They either go to status quo ante, or they win. This is a no-risk proposition.
Besides Yarmuth in Louisville, Republicans will also have to consider whether to take the knife to the seats of Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) in Nashville; Reps. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) in Kansas City on both sides of the border and perhaps even freshman Rep. Frank Mrvan (D-Ind.) in northwest Indiana. Also potentially on the chopping block: the city of Omaha, the “cracking” of which could shore up Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) in one of the nation’s swingiest seats.
If you are OCD and prone to counting things, you’ve noticed that five seats can be flipped by simply breaking up huge Democrat majorities. None, I say again, none of those five seats are among the seven seats currently held by Democrats from districts carried by President Trump in 2020. So that is looking like twelve seats with de minimus effort.
I completely understand the desire to not reduce safe GOP seats to battleground status for the sake of turning out some Democrats. That would be dumb. What is dumber is not knocking off Democrats where there is literally no risk. Why then would you not do this? A couple comes to mind. First, at some level, the GOP is convinced that by not targeting highly vulnerable Democrat districts, they will convince the Democrats in NY, CA, IL, and MI to spare GOP districts. I don’t know why they’d believe that, but I have watched the Stupid Party in action enough to know that someone, somewhere, is whispering that in McConnell’s and McCarthy’s ears. A second possibility is that those state parties find fundraising on a lone Democrat to be useful and, all things being equal, would rather have the money generated to throw a, for instance, John Yarmuth out of office than actually to throw him out.
Unfortunately, there is a third possibility.
Years ago, football great Peyton Manning did a skit for Saturday Night Live, back when it still pretended to be something other than a woke preach-fest, called “Mentor.” Manning plays the role of himself using football to teach values to a group of kids. There are lots of parts apropos to this post, but one part is exactly on target:
“Do you wanna lose?”
Yes. A lot of Republican officeholders want to lose in a collective way. They want to stay in office, but they don’t want actually to fight because then the Washington Post or New York Times or Joe Scarborough, or Chris Wallace might say mean things about them. And they’d have to socialize with those nasty populists who love America and who are the butt of cocktail party jokes and David French essays. It is safe to be in the minority where you don’t have to answer for anything because you don’t have to do anything. And unless we let these people know that being a happy loser is not a career path, we will be stuck with them forever.
Ignore Mitch
We will see the SURRENDER PARTY in action, so be prepared for a lot of cowardice and surrender.
It’s an absurd notion. That the Speaker has to be a member is implicit, every Speaker of every legislature in history has been a member of that legislature.
somebody eliminate McConnell’s seat, both the one in Congress and the one that house’s his brain.
The GOP SOP: Win by losing.
-PJ
D’s are commies. Make sure they lose seats in whatever way you can, politically speaking.
And do not forget that a ‘bipartisan redistricting committee’ is anything but. When AZ voted for that, the ‘Independent’ that Jan Brewer appointed was really a Democrat. The three Dems met in secret (illegal), created a District map that favored the Dems (illegal), voted on it without any R input (illegal) and implemented it. Brewer sued and a Leftist judge threw out the suit. That is how we got Sinema, an avowed Communist and member of Code Pink, ‘winning’ her seat in Congress in 2012. The Dem takeover of AZ is nearly complete.
The GOP in red states should “stripe” redistrict big rat cities. Run thin stripes through each city that extend as many miles outside the city as needed to wipe out any rat majorities. Texas could do this through Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc.
A switch of the House to the gop is meaningless if the new majority is made of assistant democrats.
“It’s an absurd notion. That the Speaker has to be a member is implicit, every Speaker of every legislature in history has been a member of that legislature.”
__________________
And more to the point, the Framers adopted a Speaker of the House based on the Speaker of the House of Commons, who had to be an elected member of the House. Had they wanted to deviate from British practice and permit a non-member to be eligible to be elected Speaker, they would have written it into the Constitution.
Had they wanted the Speaker to be a member of the House, they would have written into the Constitution
Ridiculous. They wrote a Constitution for a literate people and did not think that it was necessary to provide a glossary for future readers without basic knowledge of commonplace terms from the late 18th century.
I used the exact argument you used. From the other direction. And you call it ridiculous. You need a good book on logic, my FRiend.
It is what is in the constitution that matters. Not what want it to mean. Or what you think it means. Your illogic is what got us Roe v Wade
I need a good book on logic? Good one. I suggest that you read The Federalist, with a good dictiobary next to you, before your next attempt to read the Constitution.
Yes, definitely get a good one, not like the bad ones you have that teach faulty logic and reasoning.
So two questions:
FIRST: Do you know what 'original intent' means? look it up in a good dictiobary"
Legal Definition of original intent
1: the actual aim or purpose especially of the framers of the U.S. Constitution
2: a conservative theory in constitutional law: only those guarantees intended by the framers and set forth in the text of the Constitution are valid
So you see, we need to follow the ACTUAL words of the Constitution. Those words do not require the Speaker to be a member, nor does it require other officers, such as Clerk, Sergeant-at-arms, or Chaplin to be members. So, where in the Constitution does the requirement for Speaker to be a member exist?
SECOND: Under Article IX of the Articles of Confederation, Congress had the power to "appoint one of their number to preside" - the Speaker. "one of their numbers" - a member. The framers of the Constitution DID NOT include such clear language in the actual words of the Constitution. They REMOVED that requirement. So if they did not include that requirement, does it not show the intent that it doesn't apply?
I will wait for your learned and reasoned response. But first get - and read - a good book on logic and deductive reasoning first. There are actually some good courses at Hillsdale College, free online.
I’m not going to waste any more time with you. But I’m glad that you have discovered the free courses offered by Hillsdale (they are excellent).
Fixed it.
You didn’t ask a simple question, you, like the Leftist whom you claim to oppose, came to a conclusion and only then sought out a textual justification for it.
The Framers wrote the Constitution for adults, not four-year-olds. They did not provide a glossary for words that all educated Americans knew and understood. There was no reason to define the word “Speaker,” so they didn’t. And since the “election of officers” clause included both the election of an office that had been limited to members of the body in both Great Britain and the U.S. (Speaker) and offices that had never been limited to members of the body (sergeant-at-arms, etc.), they would have had to say “the Speaker elected from its members, and the other officers without such limitation,” which would have made the Constitution much more prolix and much less elegant. Do you honestly think that if the Framers were going to change centuries of tradition regarding the qualifications for Speaker that they would have done so merely by not including any qualifications at all (by your reading, Greta Thunberg could be Speaker despite being younger than 25 and not being a U.S. citizen for 7 years) and then not say a word about such revolutionary change in the Federalist or in any other contemporary writing? And do you honestly think that Article I was written in a way that would permit the House to elect King George III as its Speaker, and that none of the Anti-Federalists said anything about it despite their myriad other criticisms of the Constitution? Again, use logic, not wordplay.
By the way, the Framers used the word “magazines” in the Constitution, and did not define it. Please note that they meant what “magazines” meant back in 1787, not what you may wish for it to have meant back then.
You are obfuscating, and continue to insult me. Bless Your heart.
I will try to simplify the questions so you can understand them. Let’s look at Article 1
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers;and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
I will ignore the impeachment clause, and focus on the first part: “The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers
Now, we know that other officers are not chosen from members. There is no language suggesting it be so. So answer this: What part of the Constitution distinguishes the qualifications for Speaker from other officers?
Another simple question - please try to answer. Why did the framers remove the three words “from their numbers” from the Articles of Confederation if they wanted the Speaker to be chosen from their numbers? Simple answer. They didn’t establish membership as a qualification. Show me why this is wrong.
Do you honestly think that if the Framers were going to change centuries of tradition regarding the qualifications for Speaker
DUH! This is why we had a revolution. To change the centuries of tradition of a government by a King, and all of its rules. Are you really that obtuse?
There are plenty of stylistic reasons why one would leave out unnecessary language from the Constitution. And, yes, saying “from its numbers” is unnecessary when we’re taking about electing a Speaker.
Again, you seem to think that the Framers purposely created a position of Speaker with absolutely no qualifications and that no one objected to it. Instead of accepting that the “Speaker” meant what was meant by “Speaker” at the time you prefer to read the Constitution in the most illogical way possible, and have the hubris to claim that no one at the time that the Constitution noticed what you believe was a purposeful removal of qualifications for the person who would preside over the newly constituted House of Representatives. Or do you seriously believed that no one would have objected to such a radical change in the way a legislative branch was run, different not only from the British Parliament, but also from every state legislature?
The Constitution was written for literate people who knew what words meant, and no one in the 18th century, whether a federalist or an anti-federalist, thought that the Framers were permitting the House to choose a nonmember as Speaker. Just as when we interpret the 2nd Amendment we must ascribe to “militia” its plain meaning from 1791 (it meant all free men, not something akin to the National Guard), when we interpret Article I we must ascribe to all words, including “Speaker,” their plain meaning from 1787. In the Anglo-American world of 1787, when a legislative chamber elected “their Speaker,” it was a member of such body who would preside over the chamber’s proceedings. That’s what the word meant. I know that you wish that nonmembers could be elected Speaker, but that’s not what the Framers wanted or wrote.
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