Home of the Brave, Party of the Few

Senatorial districts are called “states.” They cannot be redistricted or Gerrymandered. And in any state, even the red ones, there is generally vastly more diversity among constituents than in a Gerrymandered House district designed so that only a Republican can win. As I have noted before, Gerrymandered GOP House districts pretty much eliminate any remote possibility that a Democrat could win that seat… the local Dems are too small a minority ever successfully to mount that challenge and win.

So Republicans only have the primaries to fear, and these days, the extreme right is smacking down any candidate willing to compromise their very right-wing values by withdrawn support for the incumbent and over-funding the rightist challenger. Thus, the U.S. House of Representatives is populated by representatives who are not allowed to compromise with their Democratic counterparts to get legislation passed.

The ability of a local GOP House candidate to survive a local election too frequently depends on steadfastness and stubborn defiance. That’s why the Senate can still get legislation done, and the House is merely a road block. But what may be a local down-home issue that keeps a right-wing GOP candidate in office is also precisely the kind of extreme voting record – away from that vast ocean of middle-of-the-road Americans who actually elect the President of the United States – that keeps senior GOP policy-makers awake at night, knowing that such extreme view make a GOP presidential candidate an increasingly unlikely national mandate.

If the GOP is seen as catering only to incumbent white elites, as the nation veers into becoming a “majority based on minorities,” the Republican Party is marginalizing itself out of a national presence. Hence the focus on the immigration bill, which passed the Senate, is becoming a litmus test for long-term GOP survivability at a national level.

For the well-heeled campaign-contributors, whose real goal is eliminating regulation and lowering taxes (and much less social issues), the lack of the potential of a Republican president is a genuine threat to their ability to find a voice, even with the massive campaign contributions they are permitted under the Citizens United case. They also know that with growth among Caucasians hitting negative numbers, having more legal consumers with dollars to spend is, as the Congressional budget report notes, a big potential boost to the economy.

Even as the GOP-right is labeling conservative Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio as a turncoat for championing immigration reform, fighting to counter his success in the Senate with defeat in the House, influential powerhouse GOP contributors are using their vast pools of cash to counter what they see as local extremists who are destroying the Party’s ability to win a national election.

Their well-financed media message is clear: “Fox News viewers in Florida will see a new commercial in the coming weeks urging them to call Senator Marco Rubio. ‘Thank him for keeping his promise, and fighting to secure the border,’ a narrator says in the ad, which is paid for by the conservative American Action Network.

“Another group, Americans for a Conservative Direction, led by former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and other top Republicans, has been running ads in Iowa lately that implore those watching to ‘stand with Marco Rubio to end de facto amnesty.’

“And when the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, the Koch brothers’ political advocacy group, decided to move its signature annual conference outside Washington [D.C.] for the first time, it picked a spot right in Mr. Rubio’s political backyard: Orlando. The keynote speaker? Mr. Rubio…

“Weighing heavily on conservative leaders is a reminder of how immigration policy bedeviled Mitt Romney last year. His ‘self-deport’ comments about what should happen with the 11 million immigrants living illegally in the United States became an easy punch line for Democrats and helped drive Latinos even farther away from the Republican Party… And many see the success of an immigration reform package shaped with considerable input from Republicans like Mr. Rubio as key to their future, and his.” New York Times, July 1^st.

But unless there is a groundswell of local support for immigration reform in heavily right-wing Gerrymandered districts, local GOP candidates might be committing political suicide by voting in line with Marco Rubio’s (and his influential supporters’) supplication to pass the new bill. Even if some version of immigration reform can be passed, this complete willingness to alienate the bulk of the middle-of-the-road voters to preserve right wing purism will remain an Achilles heel for GOP national ambitions. Expect to see Democrats focus on this clear and extreme set of views that are rather out of step with what most Americans view as the path for their country.

I’m Peter Dekom, hoping that healthy debate and the ability for both sides of the aisle in the House to implement compromise will return to our excessively Gerrymandered world.