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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (20958)	12/22/2003 6:27:48 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793712

Interesting and thoughtful analysis. Thanks.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (20958)	12/22/2003 6:40:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793712

Safe House, Unsafe Principles Will conservatives benefit from safe Republican control? John Fund - Wall Street Journal Monday, December 22, 2003 12:01 a.m. DALLAS--Gerrymandering is one of the most important factors influencing elections today. And now it appears that the practice of drawing the often bizarrely shaped districts is about to cement Republican control of the House for at least the rest of this decade. But amazingly this is drawing little public attention. Even NBC's Tim Russert, the ultimate political junkie, spent 30 minutes interviewing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas on Sunday's "Meet the Press" without asking about Texas's new and controversial redistricting plan. Last Friday, the Justice Department certified that the plan was in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which ensures new district lines don't disadvantage minority voters, and a federal court rejected a Democratic challenge to its constitutionality. If the plan overcomes a couple of final legal hurdles, Republicans will likely have little worry of losing the House and Mr. DeLay may well have the support he needs to become speaker one day. For those who voted for the Contract With America to hand control of Congress to Republicans, the more important question is simply, will the GOP leadership remember it's limited government principles if it doesn't have to worry about losing control of the House? Unfortunately, the answer may already be in. This year Republicans in Congress have passed the largest expansion in federal entitlements in four decades and have presided over record increases in domestic spending. But for Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, "It's up in the air." Mr. Pence led the revolt among conservative House Republicans against the prescription drug bill this month and says now: "Sometimes I think my colleagues want to stand up for what's right, and sometimes I think the pressures for higher spending are too great." The pressures for political advantage certainly led to a battle royale in Texas over redistricting earlier this year. Over 50 rebel Democrats in the state House, egged on by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, secretly left the state for Oklahoma to deprive the legislature of the quorum necessary to debate the redistricting bill. The Republican House leadership threatened to have them arrested and compelled to attend the legislative session. Later, Democrats in the state senate pulled the same stunt except that they hightailed it to New Mexico. Eventually they gave up, came home and the new lines passed and were signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican. The new Texas lines, if they survive final efforts in federal court to overturn them, will mean significant gains for Republicans. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram predicts that the state's congressional delegation will switch from 15 Republicans and l7 Democrats to 22 Republicans and 10 Democrats, a net gain of seven seats for the GOP. In the current House that would increase the GOP's margin to 236 to 199. With so few competitive districts nationwide, the new Texas lines may well entrench the GOP as the House majority for the rest of this decade. The new Texas plan was largely the work of Mr. DeLay, whose aides say it is retaliation for a 1991 Democratic gerrymander of Texas that they believe forestalled GOP gains in George W. Bush's increasingly conservative home state. When the next redistricting rolled around a decade later in 2001, Republicans and Democrats each controlled a house of the Texas legislature, and the whole process wound up in court. There a state judge issued a competitive plan that discomfited incumbents and elicited howls of outrage from Rep. Martin Frost, former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. After a week's worth of consultations with leading politicians, the judge--a Democrat--suddenly changed his mind and released an incumbent-protection plan that left the state without a single competitive House race in last year's election. Indeed, six of the 28 incumbents seeking re-election last year in Texas had no major-party competition at all. The result in 2002 was that Republicans in Texas won 57% of the vote for the House, but wound up with less than half the seats. Majority Leader DeLay, still smarting from what he considered an outrageous flip-flop by the Democratic judge, plotted to have the new legislature--Republicans now control both houses--come back this year with a gerrymander largely designed by him. This tit-for-tat walling off of incumbents from competition became a true bipartisan exercise after the 2000 census, which mandated a new round of redistricting. If Democrats moan that they have little chance of taking back the House, they can in large part blame themselves for allowing their incumbents to greedily build political castles at the expense of more competitive districts that would have left control of the overall House more in doubt. The nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report says only 38 of the 435 House seats are even remotely up for grabs by either party in 2004. In last year's elections, more incumbents lost in the House than in the Senate, but only because five districts featured incumbent vs. incumbent match-ups mandated by shifting populations. Outside those incumbent vs. incumbent races, the re-election rate for members of the House was 98%. Gerrymandering has now attracted the attention of the Supreme Court, which this month heard arguments in a case challenging a Republican gerrymander in Pennsylvania. Democratic election lawyer Ron Klain says the case is about the "control of Congress--nothing more, nothing less." It is precisely because of those high stakes that court watchers predict the court will shy away, as it has in the past, from drawing limits around the inherently political job of drawing congressional boundaries. But that doesn't mean reform isn't possible. Some eight states use somewhat more objective means for setting the lines that determine which voters belong in which district. Iowa and Arizona had some of the most competitive House races in the last election, in large part because they have turned over redistricting to nonpartisan commissions. Those bodies can have their own biases, but at least they can be forced to address considerations such as compactness and the need to keep communities together, which self-promoting legislatures routinely ignore. Perhaps more of the 24 states with the initiative process will consider similar reforms. Of course, you can bet such reforms won't be pushed by state legislators in the other 26 states without popular pressure. State lawmakers are happy with their own incumbent gerrymanders and would be loath to upset their own apple carts. opinionjournal.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (20958)	12/23/2003 12:35:49 AM
From: 49thMIMOMander	Respond to of 793712

What is worse, the (polish-anti-war) Pope.. Funny thing how limited some (actually so many) articles are. But just as EU will handle UK, or they will do it themselves, changing the election system... Btw, anything smart by Berlusconi on Libya?? Everyone is not blessed whith such disconnected leaders while the dollar continues, not even Spain. Funny thing, Poland is (was) actually something of Jeffersonial ideal, which makes it even more complicated, clearly too much for little articles like that (not to forget the anti-abortion movement, too)