GOP sore losers trying to thwart the electoral college
Despite their losses in November, the GOPteabag party, far from engaging in anything like meaningful introspection in an effort to appeal to more Americans, is busy trying to radically alter the distribution of their state’s electoral vote counts. Such efforts, especially in states like Virginia which Obama carried with a majority of the vote in 2008 and 2012, would result in the state’s winning candidate having very few of the state’s electoral votes. In Virginia, the state’s GOPteabag party is pushing a proposal to allocate its 11 electoral votes on the basis of (heavily gerrymandered) congressional districts. The effect for 2012 would have been to give Obama 2 EV and Romney 9, although Obama won the majority vote in the state.
Two other, smaller states, Nebraska (3 CD) and Maine (4 CD), also allot their EC votes by congressional district. But neither of these states would have the same distortive effect as proposals in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, among other GOPteabag states currently weighing changes to the electoral college.
So besides introducing any and all manner of voter ID bills to try to limit the number of Americans of a Democratic Party disposition from being counted in an election, some states are Going Big by hoping to gerrymander the Electoral College vote to their party’s advantage. And to keep themselves in power without having to answer to the state’s majority preferences in presidential elections.
Still, this isn’t all the teabagger’s elected officials are up to. States controlled by the neoconfederate party are drastically reducing or eliminating their state’s individual and corporate income taxes and shifting the revenue burden onto new or higher sales taxes.
Such shifts in tax burden will, among other things, place a higher burden on lower income families who tend to spend a higher percentage of their income.
Welcome to our brave new world of sales-tax economies and winning-through-losing presidents.
Think the John Birch Party has a demographics problem? Nah. They’ll just rewrite the rules as long as they can.