Voters choose their representatives, not the other way around!
In an ironic example of how Donald Trump and the Republican Party are no different than their Democrat counterparts, the state GOP is about to “redraw” congressional districts in Texas — and possibly several other states — to secure their positions of power in Washington and deny voters from the “other side” of the aisle the right to choose their representatives. Clearly, the two-party system created by the two parties, owned and operated by the two parties for the benefit of the two parties, is alive and well.
Trump hopes to seize five congressional seats in Texas (via apnews.com):
President Donald Trump said … that he is pushing Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional maps to create more House seats favorable to his party, part of a broader effort to help the GOP retain control of the chamber in next year’s midterm elections.
The president’s directive signals part of the strategy Trump is likely to take to avoid a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House just two years into his presidency. It comes shortly before the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature is scheduled to begin a special session next week during which it will consider new congressional maps to further marginalize Democrats in the state.
Asked … about the possibility of adding GOP-friendly districts around the country, Trump responded, “Texas will be the biggest one. And that’ll be five.”
Trump had a call … with members of Texas’ Republican congressional delegation and told them the state Legislature would pursue five new winnable seats through redistricting, according to a person familiar the call who was not authorized to discuss it. The call was first reported by Punchbowl News. (Emphasis mine)
Trump later revealed that there are “about four” states he would like to gerrymander in favor of the Republican Party, before warning he would fight California in the courts if they tried to do the same thing for Democrats.
And there’s the irony. California and other Democrat-controlled states are threatening to do the same thing. In other words, representatives want to choose their voters instead of letting the voters choose their representatives.
While I’m always going to point out when Trump and the Republican Party abuse their positions of power to protect their positions of power, I want to point out that Barack Obama and Eric Holder tried a similar, but less obvious, scheme a few years ago in an attempt to build far-left majorities in Congress well into the future.
Immediately after leaving the White House in 2017, Obama teamed up with Holder to create the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC) as the face of this effort. The goal of the NDRC was to work at the grass-roots level and ensure enough Democrat control of state and local governments between 2017 and 2020 to make it possible for the Democrats to gerrymander congressional districts following the 2020 census.
While gerrymandering isn’t unusual — it’s often considered the “spoils of (political) war — the game plan incorporated by Barack Obama and Eric Holder was unusual and dangerous. Holder declared at the time that he would make so-called “racial fairness” a key part of the NDRC strategy, an approach that received early support from the courts when they invalidated legally redrawn legislative maps at the federal and state levels in the name of “fairness.”
As their plan gained traction, Obama and Holder focused on the 2018 midterms to begin building their endless far-left majorities — and it worked. When the election was over, Barack Obama and the Democrats had more election day victories than Donald Trump and the Republicans. But the success of 2018 was only a foretaste of things to come.
With the Democrat Party running the show after the 2020 election, and with the Census Bureau’s release of the nation’s new apportionment figures, Obama and Holder took the next steps to fulfilling their dream of creating endless far-left majorities — this time with help from the courts thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2019 that federal courts had no authority over questions of political gerrymandering.
In response to Trump’s redistricting scheme, Eric Holder released a statement in the name of the NDRC. Needless to say, it’s filled with ironic claims of “fairness” and “opposition to partisan gerrymandering” even as he encourages Democrats to do the same thing being done in Texas to “preserve our democracy” (via NDRC):
“Since the creation of NDRC in 2017, we have stood for fairness in the redistricting process and have opposed the use of partisan and racial gerrymanders — by all parties — designed to disenfranchise the American people. We are still committed to that ideal. In the long term the anti-democracy tactics that we have successfully fought against are inconsistent with responsive governance and deny our fellow citizens their most fundamental of rights. This is in tension with our founding documents and ideals.
“Nowhere are these anti-democracy tactics more prevalent than from Republican leaders, led by the President, who are right now attempting to gerrymander their way to unchecked power. Just as we have throughout our inception, we stand strong against this unjust attempt to thwart the will of the people.
“Let me be clear. Our enduring commitment to fairness does not blind us to reality. In this moment steps must be taken to respond to the authoritarian measures being considered in certain states and now so brazenly taken in Texas.
“We must preserve our democracy now in order to ultimately heal it.
“It is for this reason that we do not oppose — on a temporary basis — responsible responsive actions to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded. Once this time has passed, measures at the federal and state levels must be put in place to outlaw the actions that have precipitated this crisis. Those who for partisan gain would subvert the precepts of our democracy must never be allowed again to threaten that which makes this nation exceptional.” (Emphasis mine)
And here’s a little tidbit for the “we wouldn’t be dealing with this if DeSantis was president” crowd: old Ronnie-boy wants Florida to follow Texas’ lead (via TheHill.com):
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday he is “very seriously” looking at asking the state Legislature to redraw the state’s congressional map, arguing the 2020 census is flawed.
Rep. Jimmy Patronis (R-Fla.) came out in favor of redistricting in a post on social platform X, writing that “Texas can do it, the Free State of Florida can do it 10X better.”
Florida Republicans say they were already headed in this direction following a state Supreme Court decision that upheld a congressional map supported by DeSantis and state Republicans.
But the plan is gaining even more traction in the wake of Texas Republicans’ unveiling of a new congressional map.
The Constitution requires redrawing congressional districts following each decennial census (U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 2, cl. 1; 2 U.S.C. § 2a(a)) based on the constitutional standard of population equality among districts. This isn’t what Republicans and Democrats are doing, however. Instead, they are rigging congressional districts at will for the express purpose of protecting the two-party system for the benefit of whichever party may be in the majority at any given time.
No wonder the Founding Fathers were concerned about the rise of political parties and the threat they would bring to liberty; they knew that for the Republic to survive, voters had to choose their representatives . . . not the other way around.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties. He the author of The New Axis of Evil: Exposing the Bipartisan War on Liberty.
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