The GOP is in trouble and they know it. At their recent national convention, they made nice conciliatory noises about being more inclusive and open-minded, and transforming themselves from "the stupid party*" into "the party for everybody.**"
Good luck with that. The real power and money behind the Republicans continues to be Wall Street and Big Business. It's their natural constituency -- quite wealthy but fairly small in numbers. The rest of the party base is cobbled together from an odd mix of Tea Baggers and socially and religiously conservative nut jobs. None of these factions has a good track record when it comes to being inclusive, open-minded and for everybody.
And although they tried to be warmer and fuzzier at their convention, back in D.C. Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, the co-chairs of the Scorched Earth Society, are still itching to slash and burn us into economic standstill. Don't expect much in the way of real change from the GOP.
The Republicans have big demographic problems which are only going to get bigger, so their real preservation strategy will be to continue with their 2010 game plan: Suppress voter turnout, gerrymander to the extreme wherever possible, and try to bust and de-fund organized labor. Try to rig the game so that the majority doesn't rule.
They've had some success with this on the state level, and now Virginia Republicans have unveiled a new variation on the theme, this one with national implications involving the Electoral College in presidential elections. Almost all states employ a winner-take-all method of assigning electors. The candidate with the most votes gets all of the state's electors. Virginia's statehouse R's are now proposing a skewed, gerrymandered "proportional" scheme for assigning their state electors. If this plan had been in place in November, Mitt Romney would have "won" Virginia with 69% of the state's electors to just 31% for President Obama, even though Obama trounced him in the popular vote. Novel idea of "proportional."
Virginia hasn't yet adopted this cheater's program into law. If you think the idea is blatantly unfair bullshit, click this link and let 'em know:
http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=89H6zL37-RuG-Z8HrXaong
A lot of people have long thought that the Electoral College is an antiquated concept whose time has passed. Maybe they're right and it's time for the Electoral College to go. Maybe Virginia can go with it.
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(* La. Governor Bobby Jindal)
(**GOP Chairman Reince Priebus)
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