But Republicans insist on being what the military calls "a target rich environment." It's sad and serves only to create a virtual one-party state, but it is what it is. There's really no changing that until the party is ready to start changing itself in ways that don't horrify voters.
You know why Obama won twice? That's simple. The GOP has gone insane and elevated stupidity into a virtue. In a single sentence, that's it. As the demographics of America have changed, the Republican Party clung harder to its base of elderly white people, snake-handlers and the mentally ill. If things keep going the way they have for the last decade and a half, the only people voting the GOP line in 2016 will be potential school shooters.
2008 was bad, but understandable. Overcoming the debacle of George W, Bush's presidency would have been difficult under ideal circumstances and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the coming of the Great Recession couldn't have been worse.
Last November was different. Even though I never thought there was much hope of beating Obama, the 2012 election was even worse than I suspected (or predicted) it would be. Instead of winning the Senate, like most of the smart folks expected them to, the Republicans managed to lose two seats. And they lost the popular vote for the House of Representatives by over a million votes, retaining control only as a result of gerrymandering.
The popular vote is becoming an existential problem for the GOP, having lost it in five of the last six presidential elections. If there's any one thing that suggests the party needs reforming, it's that.
So what do Republicans want to do? Change the rules of the game in such a way that they wouldn't have to persuade the majority of the electorate to vote for them.
Long story short, the want to change the Electoral College so that its votes are apportioned by congressional district, much like Maine and Nebraska does today. If the system worked that way last year, Mitt Romney would be president.
That idea is as desperate as it is dumb. Basically, it would mean that voters would no longer choose their representatives, representatives would choose their voters. It's almost impossible to imagine a scenario where the public would accept that because it fundamentally undermines the concept of popular democracy.
It also only works as concept so long as Republicans control the statehouses and governor's mansions. Once that's no longer the case, you wind up with even bigger Democratic majorities and the GOP ceases to exist.
It's striking to me that this idea is taking hold in states that are naturally blue, but elected Republicans in 2010: Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The problem with that is that the Republican governors in all of those states have approval ratings more common to pedophiles than chief executives. So far as I'm aware, not one of them (with the exception of Virginia's Bob McDonnell, who happens to be term-limited) is currently above 40%, which makes it extremely likely that none of them are going to win re-election. That being the case, it wouldn't be shocking if their legislatures went down with them.
If that happens, the Democrats draw the congressional districts. And after what Tom DeLay and Rick Perry did in Texas in 2002, there's nothing stopping them from doing it as soon as they take control. It's an idea that almost seems designed to blow up in the GOP's fucking faces. Republicans could change the law in those states this year, lose next year, and the Democrats could use it to tilt the election for them in time for 2016.
The party, including chairman Reince Preibus, has given up on the idea of not running psychopaths for national office, so they want to do the next best thing: Rig the system so it works like the House and rewards lunatic candidates with districts that favor that sort of thing.
Not only would popular vote losers taking office become far more common, it would be a disaster for the country. You think crises like the debt ceiling are bad now? Just wait and see what happens if this plan is adopted
Could they really be that goddamned dumb?
For the most part, they aren't. McDonnell and the likely nominee for governor this year, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett and Florida's Rick Scott are all running away from the idea as quickly as they can. Scott Walker in Wisconsin is saying only that idea is "interesting," ignoring the fact that not only did Mitt Romney not win Paul Ryan's congressional district, Paul Ryan nearly lost it. Only Michigan's Rick Snyder, who seems determined to get kicked out of politics and might actually be insane, is whole-heartedly for it. Ohio's John Kasich, who's delirious enough to think that he might be president someday, is strangely silent on the issue.
The University of Virginia's Larry Sabato characterizes the entire sick, stupid scheme better than I ever could.
Republicans are struggling to right their ship after the defeat of 2012. The unfavorable demographic trends for the GOP that we describe in our new book, Barack Obama and the New America, have sunk in, and the party knows it must do something. We have solicited ideas ourselves, believing that it is vital for America to have vigorous party competition. You will see some of those ideas, offered by our readers and Twitter colleagues, here. But nestled among the constructive ideas is a truly rotten one, the proposal to fix and game the Electoral College to give a sizable additional advantage to the Republican nominee for president.
We have asked Crystal Ball Senior Columnist Alan Abramowitz, Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, to examine the proposal and outline its likely effects. As we suspected, it would permit a GOP nominee to capture the White House even while losing the popular vote by many millions. This is not a relatively small Electoral College “misfire” on the order of 1888 or 2000. Instead, it is a corrupt and cynical maneuver to frustrate popular will and put a heavy thumb — the whole hand, in fact — on the scale for future Republican candidates. We do not play presidential politics with a golf handicap awarded to the weaker side.
Republicans face a choice that can best be characterized by personalizing it. A healthy, optimistic party is Reaganesque, convinced that it can win the future by embracing it, and by making a positive case for its philosophy and candidates to all Americans. A party in decline is Nixonian and fears the future; it sees enemies everywhere, feels overwhelmed by electoral trends, and thinks it can win only by cheating, by subverting the system and stacking the deck in its favor. Whose presidency was more successful, Reagan’s or Nixon’s? Which man made the Republican brand more appealing?
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