· January 17, 2013

Insider: Congressional Republicans think they can do this for “the next decade”

Redistricting woes not just an Ohio problem

Stan Collender is a Roll Call columnist and longtime Washington insider in the public and private sector. In a blog post, Collender tells us this about GOP threats to hold America hostage via the debt ceiling:

But it would be wrong to dismiss it out of hand. From the conversations I’ve had with Republicans House members and staff since the 2012 election, the threats, are real and make a great deal of political sense no matter how obnoxious and damaging it otherwise would be. The key is the new House GOP politics of this decade. I’ve repeatedly been told that, with redistricting in place, House Republicans are relatively certain they’ll be able to maintain the majority at least through the end of this decade if they continue to appeal to the GOP base in their congressional districts.

We’ve discussed the problem with gerrymandering in Ohio. ThinkProgress has a piece out today chronicling a Republican State Leadership Committee report “boasting that the only reason the GOP controls the House of Representatives is because they gerrymandered congressional districts in blue states.” From ThinkProgress:

The RSLC’s admission came in a shockingly candid report entitled, “How a Strategy of Targeting State Legislative Races in 2010 Led to a Republican U.S. House Majority in 2013?. It details how the group spent $30 million in the 2010 election cycle to sweep up low-cost state legislature races in blue states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Their efforts were so successful, in fact, that Republicans went from controlling both legislative chambers in 14 states before Election Day to 25 states afterward. In turn, the new Republican majorities would be tasked with redrawing congressional districts for the 2012 election. “The rationale was straightforward,” the report reads. “Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn.”

A question for Democrats and fair-minded moderates and Republicans: Are you willing to put up with this for a decade? A question just for the GOP: Has the party of TR, Ike and Regan really succumbed to the ‘burn the village to save it’ philosophy?