Tuesday, January 8, 2013

HOUSE REPUBLICANS FACE UNCERTAIN FUTURE IN UPCOMING ELECTIONS

While it is all but certain that the GOP faces an uphill battle in all future presidential elections, the 2010 rout they established may keep them in power in the House for some time due to gerrymandering. We keep hearing how the Republicans kept the House, thus meaning the American people are behind them on their obstructionist ways. Unfortunately for us, it is not true. In a study just released by the election committee show that 1.4 million people voted for Democrats over Republicans and more than a full percentage point overall. Yet, somehow the House stayed red. The reason being is in 2010, during the latest census, GOP controlled areas altered their districts to favor themselves over anyone voting against them. Lines were redrawn eliminating blue areas for more favorable red leaning ones. This has led to what can only be described as stealing the election from the American people, which is ironic because these losers are still crowing about Obama's birth certificate and his "illegitimate" rule. Pot. Kettle. Black.

The study went on to show that even if Democrats had won by a whopping nine percentage points, they still would have lost. Here's the math from the study:

According to the Jan. 4 final tally by Cook’s David Wasserman after all states certified their votes, Democratic House candidates won 59,645,387 votes in November to the Republicans’ 58,283,036, a difference of 1,362,351. On a percentage basis, Democrats won, 49.15 percent to 48.03 percent.

But the 2012 House results show the redrawing of districts to optimize Republican representation clearly had an impact. Consider three states won by Obama in 2012 where Republicans dominated the redistricting: In Pennsylvania, Democrats won just five of 18 House seats; in Virginia, Democrats won three of 11; and in Ohio, Democrats won four of 16.

Using Wasserman’s tally, Millhiser ranked districts by the Republican margin of victory and calculated that for Democrats to have won the 218 seats needed for a House majority they would have had to have added 6.13 percentage points to their popular-vote victory margin of 1.12 points.

What this means for upcoming elections is that the GOP already holds an unfair advantage in House races for the next decade and as people are really stupid when it comes to voting against their own interests, it will take some doing to break this logjam.

Not that the Republican party doesn't have their own stuff to worry about. The Tea Party, the religious right and corporate interests do not always match up and a schism is already forming because of it. This was most recently seen in two specific votes; Hurricane Sandy aid and the John Boehner re-election vote.

What a lot of people don't realize is that Boehner almost faced a revolt withing his own party but was called off at the last minute for reasons unknown. 25 lawmakers had pledged to vote against the Speaker, but was called off less than thirty minutes to the vote after some got cold feet.

The coup was reportedly led by Justin Amash (R-MI), Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) and Raul R. Labador (R-ID) with Amash the ringleader. But many feared a fight within the party as to who to replace him with, so at least one unnamed congressperson bolted at the last second, giving others reason for pause as well. The whole thing was called off as a result. But the writing is on the wall that even the GOP is facing problems within its own ranks.

The vote against Hurricane Sandy aid was another blow to a reeling party. In a previous article, I listed everyone who voted against the aid, all from non-Northeastern states. Ironically, some of the douchebags who voted against the aid were they themselves on the floor not a week before asking for more money for aid for Katrina which was almost eight years ago. That is some balls there, guys. I don't remember you saying you needed spending cuts to offset costs when your butt was on the line?

As long as this idiocy continues, and it will, the country will be held hostage to an insane minority hellbent and destroying this country. Don't believe me? The GOP is STILL clamoring for cuts to SS and Medicare and every other program that aids poor people, not noticing that those same actions have been taken across Europe with ZERO success. But mention Obamacare and the Republicans froth at the mouth about not being like Europe. So let me get this straight, health care, which works well in other countries you are against but austerity measures which don't work, you are okay with? Unbelievable. And yet people continue to vote for these morons, a fact not helped by democrats suddenly becoming very anti-gun and giving the GOP a huge wedge issue for the next election. People don't want guns banned. They don't want sick people going to jail for medical pot. They don't want homosexuals discriminated against. Yet both sides for one topic or another are hell bent against it. This is not representation of the masses. It is corporate control. And if we get rid of our guns expect a much more fascist regime to rear it's ugly head.

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