If you are a believer that “the universe” adjusts things in its own, inexorable way, this will give you more ammunition:
Gerrymandering was supposed to cement Republican control of the House of Representatives, offering incumbents a wall of re-election protection even as public opinion turned sharply against them. Instead, the party’s strategy of recrafting district boundaries may have backfired, contributing to the defeats of several lawmakers and the party’s fall from power.
The reason: Republican leaders may have overreached and created so many Republican-leaning districts that they spread their core supporters too thinly. That left their incumbents vulnerable to the type of backlash from traditionally Republican-leaning independent voters that unfolded this week.
That helps to explain why three of four Republican incumbents in the Philadelphia area were beaten this week, while the remaining incumbent hung on by just a few thousand votes. In Florida, meanwhile, state lawmakers had shifted some Republican voters from the secure district of former Rep. Mark Foley in an attempt to shore up the re-election chances of Rep. Clay Shaw without risking the Foley seat. Instead, Democrats took both. In Texas, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s decision to transfer thousands of stalwart Republican voters from his district in 2004 to boost a neighboring seat heightened the burden on the write-in candidate trying to hold Mr. DeLay’s seat. She lost it.
The Wall Street Journal piece has a lot more. But two things about it.
First, gerrymandering is not just something Republicans have done. The Democrats have done it over the years, too. But in this case, the GOP seemingly had unlimited power and was using it to the max, redistricting as much as it could.
Secondly, some of these cases were challenged by the Demmies and went to court where the GOP lawyers argued that it was legal. On balance, the GOP side won.
So now Republicans find that gerrymandering apparently backfired in the 2006 elections. And they’re stuck with court decisions upholding redistricting and the Democrats are in power.
Guess what it’s likely the Democrats will do (the same thing)? And guess what legal options the GOP will have (not many since they so effectively defended redistricting)? TMV’s mom often said: “You made your own bed — now sleep in it.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.