Then when the first gerrymandered map surfaced ...The one that Frostie['s aide] stole from the state capitol ??
Oh, 'gerrymandered'. The one the 'RATS put together in the 90's. My mistake ! haha !
Posted on 01/09/2004 10:52:27 AM PST by jtminton
A new congressional redistricting plan for Texas, designed to eliminate several powerful Democratic incumbents, took a giant step toward reality this week.
The Republican steamroller driven by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugarland, continues to make its trek toward this year's elections by destroying practically everything in its path, including communities of interest, rural voting strength and any semblance of minority political power.
Also decimated along the way, as three divisive special legislative sessions were called by the governor on this issue, were common courtesy, professional respect and the tradition of bipartisan cooperation in the Texas Senate. But so what?
The power grabbers had a cynical goal, devised a devious scheme to achieve it and were not about to let anything or anybody stop them from going forward with their caustic action.
When rumors circulated early last year that some Republican leaders were planning to redraw congressional districts, most people dismissed them as being unthinkable even for this batch of very partisan politicians.
We thought: Surely they are not that bold? That arrogant? That mean? That power-hungry?
They turned out to be all of the above and more.
Then when the first gerrymandered map surfaced -- with DeLay's fingerprints all over it -- it was clear that they meant business. Still, it was thought that Washington politicians would not be able to get Texas Republican leaders to sign on to such a diabolical plot.
But they did.
Gov. Rick Perry, Speaker of the Texas House Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst all jumped on board.
Soon there was no pretense about what was happening or why.
They had targeted seven Democratic congressmen, and they were going to get them regardless of what it might do to the rest of the state and particularly to the people those Democrats represented.
Three special sessions later, a map was adopted. And a few weeks later, to no one's surprise, it was approved by the Justice Department.
There was some hope that a three-judge federal panel would throw the plan out on the grounds that it violated the Voting Rights Act by deliberately diluting minority voting strength in several areas.
When the judges ruled this week, the majority -- the two Republicans -- voted to uphold the new districts.
I felt the hand of Ronald Reagan in that decision.
When Reagan was president he had a habit of nominating to the federal bench very conservative and very young judges who would be around for a long time trying to turn back the clock -- and I don't mean for daylight-saving time.
One of those appointees to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was Patrick Higginbotham, who became the youngest federal judge in the country when President Ford appointed him to a district bench.
Higginbotham and Judge Lee H. Rosenthal, an appointee of the first President Bush, were the two Republicans who declared that the new map was legal, violating neither the Constitution nor the Voting Rights Act.
To their credit, the two jurists acknowledged the long history of discrimination in Texas, and they emphasized that they decided only the "legality" of the plan, "not its wisdom." They also implied that Congress ought to take a look at limiting redistricting to once a decade.
The judges seemed to recognize that this new plan will have a negative impact on the voting strength of minorities but concluded that the main motivation of Republican lawmakers was political rather than racial and ethnic discrimination.
"The myriad decisions made during [the plan's] creation were made in spite of, and not because of, its effects upon blacks and Latinos," Higginbotham and Rosenthal wrote in their opinion.
Regardless of the motivation, if the outcome is still discrimination against minority groups who for years were disenfranchised in this state, then there is still something very wrong here.
Now we'll have to put our faith in the Supreme Court, which ought to hear this case. And at the very least, it ought to put any election under the new plan on hold until the justices have heard it and ruled on its legality.
But this is the same court that heard the Florida election case, isn't it?
Oh, well, we can still hope.
Even when we have nothing else, we at least can have hope.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. (817) 390-7775 bobray@star-telegram.com
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | Missouri | 291.00 |
10 |
29.10 |
331 |
0.88 |
198.00 |
14 |
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Music to my ears . . .
Hey, he called us mean!
Yeah, that counted for a lot when the Democrats were in power, and produced one of the most astonishingly one-sided gerrymanders of the modern era.
-ccm
Then when the first gerrymandered map surfaced ...The one that Frostie['s aide] stole from the state capitol ??
Oh, 'gerrymandered'. The one the 'RATS put together in the 90's. My mistake ! haha !
What amazed me is that liberal newsrags cannot recognize the fact that the DemocRats attempted to do something unconstitutional with their legal smoke-and-mirrors rigamarole in Florida in 2000.
What a bunch of liars.
Get ready for about 8 more years or this whining from the Dims ...Texas Democrats. Soon to be on the endangered species list.
The Texas Dodocrat:
Remap could create an endangered species -
Texas' white Democratic Reps struggle for survivalTexas Redistricting starts a National Trend !:
All of a sudden now that it's Republicans doing the rearranging, it's somehow the most horrendous, mean-spirited, racist, power-hungry, and self-serving act in the world.
Let's remind them of all their caterwaling next time they're back in charge and rearrange the districts to their favor.
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