Quite so, but we’d be hard-pressed to gerrymander a single Congressional district in MA to elect a Republican. The party doesn’t really exist there anymore, except on paper. RINOs slowly killed it and Slick Willard delivered the final death blow.
I’ve always said we’d be better off turning the party up there over to high schoolers and college students, since with an aggressive attitude and walking the precincts, we couldn’t possibly slip any further down than where we are now (with a 90% Dem legislature — I see we dropped from 19 to 16 seats in the House with this election, and barely held the 5 out of 40 in the Senate. It is very conceivable the state could become the first outside the South in the modern era to have a completely Dem legislative body within a decade).
First, let me say that I did not mean my last post to suggest that you were unfamiliar with the gerrymandering shenanigans of the democratic party in MA. My remark was aimed toward non-residents of our glorious Commonwealth.
Secondly, I fully agree with you argument that a change needs to be made. The Republican Party has been in a state of complete ineffectuality on Beacon Hill for several decades. Its only achievement has been to elect a string of powerless governors whose chief function has been to act as the official scapegoat whenever the latest hare-brained Democratic scheme blows up in the legislature’s faces. The money spent on those gubernatorial adventures would, IMO, be far better spent on developing a grass roots political guerilla movement in the local cities and towns. When you really get down to it, much of the reason for the democrats’ dominance of the legislature is that so many seats simply go uncontested each election.
MA will lose a congressional seat after the 2010 Census, dropping to 9 CDs. I think that one could draw 3 or 4 of those 9 CDs to be competitive for the GOP (with President Bush getting between 46%-50% in 2004), although you are correct that one couldn’t draw any districts in which the GOP would be strongly favored.