Four for the Fourth 2020 Part II: Statehood for DC

One topic that's come up recently, and one that's relevant to our Day of Independence, is the state of statehood for the district that deserves to be a state. Via Barbara Sprunt at NPR:

House Democrats approved a bill Friday afternoon to make the District of Columbia the nation's 51st state.

The vote was 232-180 largely along party and the legislation is expected to go no further in the face of opposition by Republicans in the Senate.

For decades, Washington, D.C., license plates have bemoaned the District of Columbia's lack of statehood, reminding viewers in bold blue letters of its "taxation without representation."

Despite having a population larger than that of Vermont or Wyoming, the District's 700,000 residents don't have anyone voting for their interests on the floor of the House or the Senate...

The history of the District was that the fledgling nation needed a permanent home for its federal government under the Constitution - the preceding Articles of Confederation did not require a permanent address and it had proven confusing and cumbersome to move around half the time - but the Founders also feared a centralized capital would become a cesspool of violence unless Congress had direct control of their security. So they resolved that the capital have NO representation in Congress, not be part of any other state. When they carved out Washington DC, they carved away portions of Maryland and Virginia as the District and tried to make it a politics-free zone (Virginia took back its part - Alexandria, Fairfax, and Arlington - in 1847).

Back in those days, Washington was mostly undeveloped and barely populated with 50,000 by 1850, by comparison nearby Baltimore had 169,000 in 1850. The Federal government itself was minimally staffed with few departments, Congress didn't meet during the hot summers and most everything was handled at the state levels.

Didn't exactly stick.

The Civil War redefined the roles that the Federal government performed, requiring an expansion of the bureaucracy, which meant more local residents living and staying in the district. By the 1930s DC had the population equal to any major U.S. city. After the New Deal and World War II/Cold War expanded the Federal government to its current size, the surrounding metro - bleeding into Maryland and Northern Virginia - made DC a near-equal metropolis to New York, Chicago, or L.A.

As a result, there's currently 650,000 people living in a small almost 10-mile square area that are U.S. citizens... who also have no representation in Congress other than token attendees who can barely do things like show up in committee meetings and birthday parties.

By comparison, Wyoming the smallest populated state at 578,000 or so has a fully empowered House representative and two fully empowered Senators.

The lack of representation at the Federal level causes a lot of local hardships for the residents. Relying on Congressional approval for a lot of things that would normally be covered by a state government, for example. But the loss of political representation always sting.

The fears the Founders had about personal security for the Congress and Executive branches - the fear of mobs and riots - still hasn't been resolved by denying these citizens their rights. We still have mass protests in DC, we've had riots in the area, and yet there's still forces and mechanisms in place to ensure our halls of power are well-protected. None of this is going to change if DC becomes a state.

Statehood for the district is a question of fairness. It is a question of political representation - voting power, civil rights, accountability - for a block of citizens large enough to be a state under any other circumstance. Statehood for DC is a question of self-determination for its residents, and a concern for all fellow Americans.

There is a political element to this fight - given the cultural differences between urban and rural areas has become so partisan that the many rural and less-populated states (that are conservative) outnumber the heavily-populated states (that are liberal) - that makes it unlikely the Republican-controlled Senate will ever play along with DC Statehood. Which is all the more reason for the battleground states with Senate elections this 2020 cycle should vote out the Republican obstructionists and let the Democrats run both House and Senate and ensure DC becomes... um, have we figured out what to rename the place? Washington as a state's already been taken, it won't be a district anymore so DC is irrelevant... Can't call it New Columbia, the mailing address abbreviation would conflict with North Carolina... Oh here we go, the proposed renaming would be Douglass Commonwealth after famed abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

The polling nationwide suggests this is not a popular move, but it should be. Americans should stand for the rights of fellow Americans when it comes to our power to vote, our access to civil liberties, our abilities to elect leadership to serve us. Make DC a state, dammit.

P.S. I am totally for statehood for Puerto Rico. Its status as a territory for almost 100 years has left it vulnerable to budget crises and natural disasters that cry out for statehood to guarantee stronger national support. We've already made Puerto Ricans full citizens back in the 1910s, we need to take the full step towards commitment and make their home a full member of the United States.

Notes Before the Madness Is Official

Some different thoughts on similar topics or maybe otherwise. I dunno. Read on, and judge my prose against the poetry of the age:

1) It's surprising how deadlines creep up on you when you're busy editing your political rants into a book format, but here we are with February knocking at the door and the Iowa Caucus the starting pistol for the actual marathon race for the White House to begin.

Just as a note, this is how the Iowa Caucus actually works, which is to say nowhere near as formal and accurate as a primary vote. One reason why I don't buy into the importance of the Iowa Caucus that much.

2) The other reason I don't buy into the Iowa Caucus is that it's just ONE state putting in a vote for candidates to each of the major parties. Just one state alone does not represent the mood or mindset of the nation as a whole. And yet our primaries and caucuses are skewed to one or a handful of states deciding one right after the other, voting on regional or extreme issues that matter in one state but not the others.

The order in which the states go is itself degrading: our most populous state is California, and yet it goes last in most election cycles. That's dangerous in a horse race style campaign where candidates who could prosper in those later states can't keep up and drop out before they have a chance. It's been rare for a race to go the distance: the Obama-Clinton challenge was a legitimate back-and-forth over delegates up to early June 2008, but that's been about it in recent times. Even in races where a runner-up kept at it  - such as Santorum in 2012 running behind Mitt Romney - the race itself was over by March because enough early delegates were garnered to cross the 50 percent+1 threshold.

The President of the United States is essentially the representative of the entire nation, not of Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina or Florida or Ohio or Texas or California. I still argue that all the voters in all the states (and territories) should have a say in who their candidates for the Presidency should be: I still argue we shouldn't start with Iowa alone, or New Hampshire alone, or even California alone. I still argue all fifty states should have a One Day Primary, in late May when all the candidates have had the chance to campaign all over and all the issues have been debated and everything vetted.

3) Considering points 1) and 2), this is why I'm underwhelmed about the importance of Iowa itself as a back-breaker among the early Primary/Caucus states. I mean, how many candidates who won Iowa went on to win the actual nomination in the last 40 years? (Note: the cutoff for this measure is usually 1972-76 due to changes in electoral reforms post-Watergate) As of 2012, the numbers seem bleak.

Personally, I've always found that it's been South Carolina that's been the firewall for Republican candidates. Winning Iowa and New Hampshire may be great for momentum, but if you're Republican and you can't win South Carolina, you're in trouble. Granted, the results in 2012 put lie to that theory of mine considering Newt won SC but still lost the nomination, but that's because Newt's a hypocritical jerkass who couldn't really win anywhere else (his other victory was his home state of Georgia)...

So, yeah, whoever wins Iowa, be it Trump or Cruz it doesn't matter much until the other states start chiming in, and the other candidates fight harder to win them...

4) And yet, despite being an underwhelming state, Iowa itself is remarkable THIS cycle because this will be the first state to actually put the Republican field to the test.

There's been few things that kept the Republican party leadership sleeping well at night since all those 2015 candidacy announcements. One thing has been the assumption that Likely Voters - the ones who answer the polling questions and show up for rallies - do not directly equal Actual Voters at the booth - because, you know, that takes time from work or family.

Serious poll trackers like Nate Silver have been saying for months that early Primary polling is skewed and untrustworthy:

Trump will also have to get that 25 or 30 percent to go to the polls. For now, most surveys cover Republican-leaning adults or registered voters, rather than likely voters. Combine that with the poor response rates to polls and the fact that an increasing number of polls use nontraditional sampling methods, and it’s not clear how much overlap there is between the people included in these surveys and the relatively small share of Republicans who will turn up to vote in primaries and caucuses.

But there’s another, more fundamental problem. That 25 or 30 percent of the vote isn’t really Donald Trump’s for the keeping. In fact, it doesn’t belong to any candidate. If past nomination races are any guide, the vast majority of eventual Republican voters haven’t made up their minds yet.

As Silver says, polling is one thing and actual results at the booth are another. It IS possible that 35 to 45 percent of Likely Voters in a state will say "Oh yeah Trump is MY GUY" and yet when push comes to shove only 20 percent actually do show up to vote. Or that the ones getting polled do not reflect the actual mood or viewpoint of everyone else in the state. Or that the poll respondents give the answers they THINK the poll-takers want to hear. A lot of that falls under what's called the Bradley Effect. It is possible people are just answering for Trump because A) he's the only name they remember, B) they're messing with the pollsters, C) he's a default answer because they honestly haven't decided on the field yet.

So what happens when the results might match? What happens if the answer is D) Trump DOES speak to their political outrage and they show up to vote that way?

Granted, turnout can be low and the projected numbers on that based on polling won't likely occur. But what if the percentages remain aligned between Likely and Actual? What happens if the 35 percent of poll respondents for Trump turn into 35 percent of the real-world vote count?

If that does happen, even in Iowa this Monday with its wonky caucus and its minor importance, expect to see rioting outside the RNC headquarters by Tuesday. Because it means the polls aren't lying, aren't skewed. That they are an accurate reflection of a voter base fearful of immigrants and foreigners, of a voter base willfully ignorant of the nuances of governance, of a movement within the foundation of the party itself driven by an anger that can no longer be contained.

It will mean that Trump is in charge of the entire circus that is a Year of Election, he's in the driver's seat of the GOP clown car.

5) And how will Trump end up in the driver's seat? It will be the Republicans' own damn fault.

The GOP started off looking at 2016 as a big year for them to win. They were looking at the trend of how control of the White House can shift from one party to the other every eight years - which isn't entirely true - and so figured with Democratic President Obama term-limited that a Republican would take his place.

This is why so many candidates - a record 17 names! - put their hats in the ring. Just ride that realignment cycle of voter dissatisfaction of Democratic rule into an easy win and reap the benefits.

And yet... right now they and the national punditry are looking at that field getting dominated by the likes of Trump and thinking "What the hell went wrong?" Even Tucker Carlson, self-appointed defender of uber-Conservative thought, is speaking this in public. Although Carlson is only fully correct on one point: the Conservative Establishment - hiding itself in its own echo chamber of think-tanks and talk-shows - doesn't understand its own voters anymore (his other points about immigration as an issue overlook the real issues of income inequality, personal debt among millions of families, and the fact that illegal immigration is actually dropping the last 3-4 years).

What's really happening here is something I alluded to earlier about the Republicans' self-defeating paradox in what they want from their political standard bearer: "...The Republicans have an Active-Negative agenda, yet they need a Passive-Positive - another Reagan with the charm and skill to avoid the issues and project a congenial persona - to sell it..." I noted in slightly greater detail:

Here's the problem I'm finding about the Republican Party: the party base - the Tea Partiers, the Second Amendment Fetishers, the small-government-drown-it-in-Grover's-bathtub crowds - seems so eager to want an Active-Negative type serving as their President.  They want someone who will restrict and slash government services, cut taxes on the rich (while raising taxes on the lazy poor), deregulate businesses to run amok in a Free Market free-range, shut down the borders against illegals, and wage war against The Dreaded Other despite the costs.  A lot of behavior that history shows falls to Active-Negatives under what Barber called the "I Must" mindset that drives A-Ns to Compulsive, unshakable agendas.

But at the same time, the party leadership recognizes that such A-N types are difficult to elect to office anymore...  So the party leadership is trying to manufacture, promote, or encourage the illusion that their "establishment" candidates - the likes of Jeb, or even what they tried with Romney last time - will run "positive" campaigns pursuing "reforms" on topics like education and immigration and job creation...

And that's not happening with Jeb, is it? Or any other Establishment candidate, even the likes of Rubio is having trouble polling in double-digits.

The ones that have polled well - even temporary faves like Carson and Fiorina - have been the anti-Establishment candidates of Trump and Cruz. The ones openly campaigning on the issues as Active-Negative types, shilling to the attitudes of No Compromise, with bullying as their method and destruction of the status quo (even what works) their intent.

They're polling well - and likely to win the GOP Primaries - because Trump and Cruz are going up against terrible Establishment candidates. I mean, on paper some of them are respectable - various Governors, a few Senators with long careers, varied experiences in the public and private sectors that normally would impress Republican voters - but on the debate stage and on the campaign trail turn into flat, boring, degrading personas that few people would want to meet at a high school reunion much less listen to at a rally. That's because in many respects, these Establishment candidates are by habit Active-Negatives and can't provide an honest contrast between fellow A-Ns.

With a Republican Party united behind essentially one message and platform - lacking diversity or disagreement among themselves over the issues that would provide honest contrast and choices between candidates - the choices are now over Personality, which candidate can project as a Reagan-esque Leader of Charm and Skill. None of them do (not even Trump or Cruz despite their numbers), none of them can present himself (herself) as another Reagan. They're all little Nixons in varying degrees of personalities and talking points, and nobody wants another Nixon.

Trump may have a stage presence similar to Reagan's, but Trump has none of the congeniality or warmth or wit that Reagan used. Trump is all bluster, all noise and braggadocio, quick with the insult but not the bon mot, which may rally the Far Right who enjoys such displays but will wear out its welcome among the average voters who seek better leadership qualities than that. On a stage littered with A-Ns, Trump's unique trait has been an unshakable confidence that few A-Ns actually possess.

This has been the result of the RINO Party Purge: driving out all progressive or moderate or centrist thought from the Republicans until only those who openly wholeheartedly accepted a Far Right agenda were in the ranks to rise up to this level of power. When your Party accepts and promotes only candidates who love an Active-Negative (restrictive and anti-government) agenda, Active-Negative candidates (like Nixon) are all you get.

They honestly do not have a contrasting personality that can go up against the Nativist Populist mood of the GOP Far Right base. They do not have someone respectable enough - with his own power base among more moderate voters within the party ranks that cannot be shredded by the Far Right Noise Machine that really controls the party now - to stand against Trump's wave of support and argue effectively for saner solutions.

6) Trump's refusal to show up for a Primary debate - hosted by the Far Right Noise Machine's foundation AKA Fox Not-News no less - can have serious repercussions if Trump does well (Second or better) in Iowa and especially if he wins in New Hampshire.

It will means A) Trump does not have to play by the Party's rules, and B) Trump does not have to suck up to the Far Right Noise Machine to win the Far Right voters, which will be a major break in the power that Noise Machine - Fox, Newsmax, National Review, all the other wingnut media in orbit around them - has wielded since the 1990s. It will mean NOTHING within the usual chains of command among the Conservative Republicans - the deep pocket backers, the party's internal bureaucracy, decades of protocol and etiquette - can contain or even stop Trump. Outside of straight-up cheating, that is. In this scenario, only Trump can destroy Trump before the nomination is locked up. And he may be too media-savvy for self-immolation.

And what happens if Trump wins and becomes the standard bearer for the GOP heading into November? Well, that's been considered and will need reconsideration when that dread day comes. We'll see.

So, to summarize: I'm not worried about Iowa all that much and not really concerned about Iowa. But like a fantastic car-wreck on the interstate, I cannot look away...

Instead of Breaking Maps, Let's Go By Proportions

My rants against the gerrymander are often enough that it's one of my key reform arguments since the old days when this was a different blog.

So whenever I see someone else out there offering a suggestion on how to kill the gerrymander, I pay attention.  This time it's Noah Gordon over at The Atlantic suggesting that we can use Proportional Seating - a parliamentary system used by a lot of European democracies - as a way to end the evils of the gerrymander:

What is proportional representation, or PR? It’s a system that aims to gives parties the same percentage of seats as the percentage of votes they receive—and it might be able to end our gerrymandering wars.
Every ten years, state officials are charged with redrawing district maps to account for population shifts in the Census. In practice, incumbent lawmakers often turn into cartographers with the power to change maps to suit their needs. The problem is epigrammatic: Rather than voters choosing their legislators, legislators are choosing their voters...

...Even with good, non-partisan intentions, it’s getting harder to draw single-member districts that get a party’s seat share to approximate its statewide vote share...

In the United States, those geographical areas could be the states. Imagine Oregon sent five members of the House. Under PR, if Democrats got 60 percent of the statewide vote and Republicans got 40 percent, three Democrats and two Republicans would be elected to the House. Or if the two big parties got 40 percent each, and the Green Party won 20 percent of the vote, the Greens would send a representative to Congress. The largest states could use several smaller electoral districts, so that, for example, someone from San Diego isn’t represented only by northern Californians.

There are different ways of determining which candidates from the parties make it in. Most European democracies use what's called an open-list PR system, where each party nominates (at most) as many candidates as that district sends to its legislature. Voters get a single vote for a candidate that also counts for that candidate’s party.

Think again of five-member Oregon. One popular local Republican wins 40 percent of the vote, and two other Republicans win 10 percent each. All three go to Congress because the party won three-fifths of the state’s votes. The top Libertarian candidate receives 20 percent. He or she, too, goes to Congress. No Democratic candidate gets more than 8 percent of the vote, but because the total number of votes cast for Democrats adds up to 20 percent, the last congressional seat goes to the first-place winner among them...

Proportional voting won't affect the Senate: each state still gets two (although this disproportionately favors the smaller states nowadays).  Proportional will affect the Presidency in terms of the Electoral College, with regards to the numbers that the Congressional seats can add to the table.  Especially if we follow through with my idea that we currently have too few Congresscritters for the larger populated states (we haven't increased the representation since the 1920s, during which our population's tripled).

As Gordon notes in his essay, Proportional voting has its drawbacks: it's more complex than the current Winner-Take-All district voting we currently use, and that geographically large states - California and Texas, obviously - will need to make extra effort to ensure all their representatives don't come from one corner of their state (you don't want all of your officials coming from Los Angeles).

But the benefits of Proportional are great: above all, every vote really does matter.  Gordon notes "Under the current system, a candidate who receives 49 percent of the vote and a candidate who receives 5 percent of it in a two-way House election receive the same reward: none. This provides little incentive for Democrats in rural Georgia to vote in House elections at all, for example."  Under Proportional, the odds improve that your Party/field of candidates can win enough seats to matter to where you NEED to get out your vote (as well as your like-minded neighbors).

Proportional does something else: it breaks the logjam of having two dominant national parties - Republican and Democratic - that are polarizing the entire political spectrum.  With a Proportional system, the lesser parties - Libertarian, Green, or any Moderate/Centrist party that can rise up - now have improved odds to getting at least one seat per mid-sized/large state where the percentages favor those getting 10-15 percent of a vote.  They won't overtake the established machines - the Senate and Presidency still favor a two-party, Winner-Take-All electoral system - but the so-called Third Parties can break the frozen static noise of the national political landscape by forcing a fractured House into forming coalitions like they do in the European democracies.

Picture a U.S. House with 435 seats to share, meaning you need 218 seats to hold a majority.  Now, say the Republicans hold only 207 seats to the Democrats 205.  There's 23 seats belonging to various Third Party Congresscritters, say 8 seats are Libertarian, 6 seats are Green, 1 is a radical Right Wing faction, and the remaining 8 are independent non-party rabblerousers.  The Republicans could form a coalition with the Libertarians, some of the independents, and that one Radical and retain control, but the Libertarians will insist on major trade-offs that would otherwise be poison to the GOP (including giving their members key committee chairs, and pushing a more Libertarian agenda that could rile the nation against the Republicans who will shoulder the blame...).  If the Republicans can't get enough of the factions to join in a coalition, the Democrats could team up with the Greens and enough of the non-party members to reach that 218.

An off-shoot of this will be the interchanging of party members: it will become easier for disgruntled elected officials to switch parties with similar bent without losing their support back home.  This gives other parties the chance to gain effective, organized leaders who know how to campaign and govern.  As the Third Parties gain in stature, the probabilities of needing to form coalitions - which can de-radicalize the partisan nature of politics as more moderate factions gain value - will increase.

The greatest argument against Proportional will be the confusing nature of it at the national level.  It will also require an increase in the number of elected seats in order to ensure every state, including the smallest ones, to have enough seats to share.

But this shouldn't be a problem: as I've noted earlier, we haven't increased our number of Congressional seats since the 1920s.  We're now under-represented at triple the current population and with a greater disconnect between the voters and the Congress.  The real trick, in my estimate, is accurately gauging how many seats we should really have.

We've got a lot of small, mid-sized populated states.  There's 8 states with just one Representative, 5 states with two, 3 states with three, 6 states with four.  Double-digit representation doesn't kick in until you're two-thirds of the way through the state count.  By comparison, there's only 2 states with 18 seats, 2 states with 27 seats, then Texas at 36 and topped by California with 53 seats.  California has roughly one-sixth of the entire nation's population, and you'd like to think they should get enough proportional seating compared to all the smaller populated states that can barely total the same number.

Bumping every state up to have two House seats no matter what helps with the smaller states, but then it's a question of how to increase from there.  A simple, barely thought-out idea would be to break it down by sections: bottom five states have two seats, next bottom five states get three, next five states get five (going by prime number), next five get seven, next five get eleven, so on.  But that doesn't reflect the disparity of populations when we get into the top ten/fifteen states, where one state can be double the number of the next-sized state (California almost doubling that of Texas) and thus deserves a specifically-tailored seating count.

The only other problem would be genuine representation.  Proportional seating will be an advantage to the candidates but what happens if the results have every candidate from one city or one region of a large, diverse state?  As Gordon noted, it'll be up to the states - or federal rules, especially if we use an amendment to make this work - to designate special districts (most likely cities) to ensure at least one representative from each district gets elected.  It will favor the urban over the rural, but that's what representation is supposed to do: favor the people who actually live there.

The other thing about representation will be the gender and ethnic, which is an existing problem already (especially the under-representation of women in Congress).  It will be up to the parties to ensure they get representatives that reflect the population's diversity (it ought to be like that already, although such "outreach" efforts by the Republicans towards women, Blacks, Hispanics, and minorities in general have been painful at best).  Without exact district maps to create minority-majority districts, we run the risk of losing Black and/or Hispanic representation.  Proportional may fix that by encouraging voter turnout anyway, and having enough voters back minority candidates at a state level to ensure healthy representation (it would beg the question if moderate or independent voters will vote with such diversity in mind).

As far as breaking the gerrymanders, Proportional is the simplest method of doing that without getting into the partisan divides struggling over "fair" districting (which still gets violated/ignored) or "impartial" committees (which can still get gamed).  Getting Proportional to work, however...

Part Two of Today's Post: Why I Think the GOP Is Going Overboard to Pass Anti-Abortion Laws

Actually, there's a good number of reasons.  For starters, banning abortion has been a top ticket item for the Republicans ever since Roe V. Wade became a campaign issue.  It's just never been a Top 10 issue for voters overall (most voters have as their top issues Jobs, Jobs, Better Wages for Jobs, Better Education, Education That Leads to Jobs, and Not Having Anybody Pay For Anything Anymore).

The second reason there's been a recent surge in the anti-abortion legislation has been that Tea Party "revolution" the Far Right kicked up in response to Obama's 2008 win.  While the Tea Party supposedly formed over libertarian issues such as opposing government-controlled health care reform, in practice the Far Right that benefited from Tea Party support has been pushing a harsh socio-religious agenda and ignoring economic issues outside of massive tax cuts to corporations.

But what got me quizzical is "why now?"  Why are the Republicans - at least at the state level - going batshit crazy trying to get restrictive legislation that would essentially block any abortion, and doing so in such heavy-handed ways?

It's not that the courts are suddenly more pro-fetus than ever before.  Wisconsin's anti-abortion legislation just got held up by the courts already, and there's a certain guarantee that the Ohio, Texas, and North Carolina anti-abortion laws (North Carolina's lege hid their anti-abortion bill in a motorcycle safety bill!) will get blocked by the courts as well.

And, here's the thing that gets me, it's not like the Republicans ever really pushed this hard against abortion when they really had the opportunities to do so.  I mean, look at the states that had a Republican-controlled legislature for the last two or three decades.  Outside of the occasional attempt to restrict funding and access - and taking on partial-birth abortions as a method sure to turn off even pro-abortion supporters - I don't recall any of those states making a major push before 2011.  I live here in Florida, where the Republicans have basically been in control since Jeb Bush was governor in 1998 onward: I don't recall any major anti-abortion fights (and still haven't, probably because of other reasons I'll get into later).  Texas has been pretty much all-GOP since Dubya was governor in 1994... until this year, not a peep.

The thing I figured out, pretty much around 2006, was that while the Republican Party talked tough on the abortion issue, they really didn't want to vote it out of existence.  Partly because it would get rid of their most fanatical voting base: the pro-fetus voters are almost uniformly single-issue voters, and uniformly GOP.  Get rid of that as a rallying issue and you'll see the support wither.  But also because if the Republicans did make a major push against abortion, it would not only rile up and unite the Far Left voters (who've been for the most part disorganized compared to their Far Right numbers) but also alienate the more moderate voters who normally wouldn't care.

It's one of the paradoxes of being human: we're against something unless we gotta be for it.  Most Americans would consider themselves pro-life in that they don't want to see a fetus get aborted: most would never consider it, they'd want to raise the child or see it raised by an adoptive family.  However, most Americans also know that there are cases - rape especially, also the health of the mother - where abortion is an honest option.  (This is why the Far Right tries to dismiss rape as an issue nowadays, they're trying to degrade rape as an exception.)  If the GOP went after abortion access even in cases of rape, incest and saving the life of the mother, there would have been a huge cry from voters who'd otherwise not even think of abortion and those voters would have switched to more pro-choice candidates.

I'd thought this was the real reason why, when the Republicans had all three branches of the federal government - Dubya in the White House, control of the House and for the most part the Senate, 5-4 control of the Supreme Court - they barely ever looked at abortion as an issue.  They went after partial birth in 2003, but then... nada.  Cricket chirp noises.

But now, ever since 2010 when the Far Right used Tea Party outrage to retake the U.S. House and a good number of state governments, there's been a massive push.

Part of it is due to Reason Two I gave earlier: the Tea Party movement brought into power elected officials who were far more wingnut than previous officials, and more likely to push the agenda in spite of the electoral hazards.  But this doesn't explain all the normally standard-issue Republicans suddenly backing these pushes (and fear of getting primaried out isn't that high a reason: there's too many seats involved and even Norquist doesn't have that kind of reach).  This is where Reason Three comes into play: the underlying fear by the GOP at both the state and federal level that their party is running out of time.

Look again to Texas.  Like I noted earlier, Texas has been GOP for decades, they've been socially conservative on a lot of issues for far longer.  But the population has been trending further Hispanic, (and not even due to illegals, simple birth rates are what's happening) enough that even the massive gerrymandering efforts to hinder Hispanic voter responsiveness won't protect Republican incumbents.  And Hispanics, despite being conservative on some issues, tend to vote for Democrats because they agree with Dems on health care and education. (the shift in Hispanic population is one of the reasons California's gone Blue State).  The painful thing: Hispanics may be prominently pro-life, but they still vote Democrat because health care and education and immigration are bigger concerns.  Texas may not shift to Democratic control by 2014 (or even by 2016), but sooner rather than later the Democrats will have solid control of Texas at a national, state and maybe even local levels.  Texas has an even better chance of going Purple (like Florida and Pennsylvania) this 2014, which still hurts the wingnut agenda.

The other states like Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina are under threat of losing Republican control as well (I'd throw in Florida, but for some reason we're not pursuing a heavy pro-fetus agenda in this state.  I think the heavy Hispanic population is already a deterrent), less due to Hispanic voters and more due to the GOP voting base - angry elderly white guys - dying off and getting replaced by Millennial voters who are more left-leaning on a lot of issues than even previous generations at their age.  Those states are not as solidly pro-Republican as the party would admit: North Carolina in particular is showing major signs of buyers' remorse letting the wingnuts take control, and the next election cycle might see a major purge (unless the voter ID laws they're bound to push effectively cut off voter turnout).  Walker might skip running for Wisconsin governor for the excuse of focusing on 2016 and the White House (conveniently avoiding the embarrassment of likely losing re-election in 2014).

It's this reason - the Republican Party as it knows itself is doomed by basic demographics and the march of time - that I think the Far Right has gone overboard this year pushing their pro-fetus, kill-Planned-Parenthood, fuck-women's-health agendas.  They may not get another chance like this again.  Even though this may accelerate the Republicans' loss of control by alienating more voters than ever before, they'll do it.  They have the wingnut will to do it now: and they only have two more election cycles (2014 and 2016) to do anything about it before the population really does turn against them.

For what it's worth: just don't vote Republican, okay?  Please?  Thanks.

Proof Why Rick Scott Is Gonna Be A Terrible Governor

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's schools.  Kinda knew that he was going to destroy public education from Day One.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's environment.  A fragile ecosystem like ours - the threat of drought, water toxicity, etc - was never the concern of conservatives obsessed with land development even in a market incapable of selling new (or even existing) properties.

It's not the damage he's going to do to Florida's social net - the cuts to public employee jobs, killing off service departments, forcibly privatizing services that will actually be MORE EXPENSIVE - in order to justify massive tax cuts to corporations that take everything from the state and GIVE NOTHING BACK.

No.  The proof that Rick Scott is going to be a terrible Governor is how he's ruining the lives in OTHER STATES by seeking to kill a proposed law that would regulate pharmacies by tracking prescription drugs.

Why is this a big deal?

Something called "pill mills".  Thanks to the law, any "pharmacy" in this state can open up to sell medications - pain-killers like Oxycodone - that are perfectly legal but have to be regulated as they are narcotic and deadly when overdosed.  These pill mills create a system where people can come in "claiming" they need pain-killers, get a "doctor" to sign off on a high dosage, and buy them by the hundreds.  The people can then travel to other states that tightly regulate pain-killers and sell the pills on a street corner.  It's hard to arrest a pain-killer seller as the pills ARE legal (you have to prove intent, usually if the dealer is packing tons of the pills).

Florida is currently the nation's primary source of "pill mills".  Thanks to one thing: we currently have no means of tracking prescriptions.  A law passed in 2009 but not yet implemented would do that.  Scott and his pro-business buddies in the State Lege want to kill that law before it even starts, citing it as an "Orwellian" step over our state's medical records.

The problem with allowing these "pill mills" to continue operating is obvious: those pain-killers can be lethal.   There's reportedly seven deaths A DAY in Florida alone.  People get addicted to them pretty quickly too.  And because of their legality (under regulation), pain-killers are easier to get than cocaine and heroin (and maybe even meth).

Scott's excuse that the prescription tracking is "Orwellian" flies in the face of logic.  Other medical records and other prescriptions are tracked all the time.  Considering the massive War On Drugs (with billions spent going after marijuana, one of the least deadly drugs out there), would Scott consider attempts to regulate medical marijuana usage "Orwellian" as well?  Probably not.

Here's Scott's real reason for wanting to kill this regulation:  It's a regulation.  Period.  The Far Right in this country have hate-filled obsessions, one of which is regulations (the others are taxes, Social Security, voting rights, abortion, sex ed, evolution, and freedom marches in other countries).  If there's a regulation on how a business operates, even if that regulation is there to SAVE LIVES, the Far Right wants it gone and gone yesterday.

Here's another reason: Scott's background in medical services.  Not only was he a MASSIVE MEDICARE FRAUD when he ran an HMO, he went on to establish clinics and pharmacies (like Solantic or Pharmaca) to increase his personal wealth.  He's got ties to the state's pharmaceutical industry... an industry that's profiting one way or another from having these "pill mills" stay open.  They profit: he profits.  It's that simple, and that scary.

Forty-two other states have a similar database system in place.  The state office that was supervising it had garnered private grants to begin its funding (it wasn't costing taxpayers much of anything).  There is no reason to oppose such a common-sense program that could well help Florida save millions in law enforcement costs and drug abuse treatments.

Except for one reason: Rick Scott is a greedy-ass crook.  And a terrible governor.

To the 2.5 million Floridians who voted for Scott: I hope your family members are pain-killer addicts.  It's called Karma, enjoy it.

(I know I shouldn't be mean-spirited, but how the hell else you gonna get through to the Far Right how screwed up their priorities and obsessions are?)