Hello Mike,   
      
    >> The Republican Party is self-destructing.  It has become the party   
    >> of old ideas.  A party that clings to an ideology that has long been   
    >> discredited and discarded, having a majority in the house only due   
    >> to gerrymandering and a very slim majority in the senate that it has   
    >> no hopes of retaining.   
      
    MP> Ironically, in my state, the gerrymandering that flipped it from electing   
    MP> mostly Democrats to mostly Republicans was done by Democrats hoping to get   
    MP> rid of the 1 or 2 Republican Reps that kept getting elected.  The first   
    MP> election year after they did that, every district but maybe one went   
    MP> Republican, including at least one that had not done so in decades.   
    MP> Although   
    MP> they got one of those districts back, the one or two districts back before   
    MP> that that were Republican have remainded so for the past 20 year since, as   
    MP> have the others they lost.   
      
    MP> Local Democrats get really, really angry when you use the word gerrymander   
    MP> around them.  Really, really angry.   
      
   They all do it.  Democrats and Republicans alike.  It is the   
   nature of the game.  The first rule of politics is to get elected.   
   Or re-elected as the case may be.  A politician's duty is to   
   himself/herself first, everybody else last.  That is the way the   
   game is played.   
      
   State legislatures have the power to redistrict congressional   
   boundaries, not the Congress.  So what do members of Congress do?   
   They pressure their buddies back home to vote their way.  Quite   
   easy to do.  "You want the funds to build that bridge in your   
   town?  Then draw up those congressional lines the way I want."   
   Works every time.   
      
   Republicans control three quarters of the state legislatures,   
   along with governorships.  Democrats are the clear minority in   
   that area.  You think the people really have a voice in who   
   gets elected to Congress?   
      
   Democrats have the blue wall, and have learned how to win   
   the Presidency.  But Republicans own everything else.   
      
   --Lee   
      
   --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb   
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)