"...have Republicans inadvertently boxed themselves into an alternate universe..."

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/3/15/13381/1445

Walling Themselves In

by BooMan
Fri Mar 15th, 2013 at 01:38:01 PM EST


An interesting set of observations from Charlie Cook:

After Republicans won only 48 percent of all votes cast for the House in 2012 but 54 percent of the seats, it’s no secret that the party enjoys the huge built-in structural advantages in the chamber that Democrats had going for them decades ago. In a January memo, veteran GOP pollster Bill McInturff observed, “If you began your career as a Republican trying to win the House in the 1970s and 1980s, you would adopt, as I do, the borrowed adage, ‘There’s no crying in redistricting.’ ” The current unprecedented geographic concentration of Democratic voters was compounded by the 2010 wave election that gave Republicans unprecedented power in state legislatures to redraw political boundaries. Combined, these two demographic developments cast doubt on whether even a 2006-size wave would enable Democrats to win control of the House at any point this decade.

But could the Republicans’ arguably rigged House majority actually be a curse disguised as a blessing? It’s an interesting question. They clearly did everything they could to purge Democratic voters from their districts ahead of 2012, no matter whether those voters were white, black, Hispanic, left-handed, or right-minded—just as Democrats would have done had the roles been reversed. But in the process of quarantining Democrats, Republicans effectively purged millions of minority voters from their own districts, and that should raise a warning flag. By drawing themselves into safe, lily-white strongholds, have Republicans inadvertently boxed themselves into an alternate universe that bears little resemblance to the rest of the country?

It kind of like the whole party has decided to retreat behind the walls of a gated-community. They are retreating everywhere. Home-schooling is exploding. Gun sales are off the charts. And reality and facts are increasingly dispensed with.

[Skidmore]

1. It takes more than redistricting to box yourself into those walls. It takes embracing

a political platform that is exclusive and not inclusive. AND it takes a sense of entitlement as big as the universe to think it is okay to do so.

[TrogL]

2. Yes Authoritarians live in a constructed universe

[The Magistrate]

3. The Comment To Mr.Cook's Article, Ma'am, By a Mr. Sigfried Heydrick, Is Well Worth Reading....

"Gentlemen, to put it bluntly, you're well and truly screwed. You can try all
the road apple polishing you want, you can try rebranding, you can pretend
you're going to change, but here's the reality.

"You have blown off the entire next generation. If you're under 40 years old
(born in 1973), all you have ever seen of the Republican party are crazy,
greedy, hateful, hypocritical old coots who have never, ever done anything that
benefits you and who oppose everything you believe in. There is nobody coming
along to replenish your ranks. The one single faction you had that was young,
energetic, dynamic, and could reinvigorate you with the fresh blood you desperately
need were the Libertarians, whom you shamelessly manipulated, used, and then
repudiated. They will neither forget nor forgive the treatment received at your
hands in the Tampa convention. Rand Paul will avenge his father. They want nothing to do with you.

"They have watched you shut down the gov't, lie your way into two wars where
they bled and died and you didn't. They have watched you sell off the country
to the highest bidder. They have watched you try to force your bigoted and intolerant religious beliefs down their throats. They have watched you attempt to deny the citizens their most basic right in any democracy, the right to vote. They have watched you wage war on women, brown people, and the future. They have watched you attempting to silence any voices not your own. They have watched you spend the country into the ground then try to blame the guy who's trying to bring the country back. They want nothing to do with you.

"They see you embracing crazy, hateful old people with teabags hanging from their hats
demanding their country back. They see you attempting to destroy the government
in an effort the destroy the first black President .They see that you hate women, hate gays, hate minorities, despoil the environment, fanatically resist the future, and want to return the country to the days of their youth. They see a party defined by hate, intolerance, racism, bigotry, religious fanaticism, tribalism, ignorance, and fueled by a rage against all that is not them. They want nothing to do with you."



There is more at the link,if you scroll down a bit....

http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/cook-report/the-gop-keeps-getting-whiter-20130314

[babylonsister]

4. Thanks so much for bringing

this to my attention, The Magistrate. I don't normally read the comments, but Mr. Sigfried Heydrick is spot on!

[Rowdyboy]

6. That insightful comment alone is worthy of serious discussion. It cuts to the heart of the matter..

and defines the discussion quite well.

[The Second Stone]

5. They have a declining demographic due to their escalating rhetoric

They are locked into their rhetoric and its policies. It will become a weirdos debating club that occasionally controls the Senate and for the next 10 years, the House. But it will continue to decline.