Republican Party

All Politics Is State and Local Politics

Here's Tommy Christopher with a more elaborate case for something I coincidentally mentioned in my column yesterday about state and local politics and the Republican effort to steal elections:

If people really don’t want their votes suppressed, people in states which voted for Barack Obama twice, if the American people really wanted a Democratic House of Representatives by more than a million votes, then how is it that Republicans are even in a position to do any of this? What do these states have in common?

Obviously, they all have Republican governors, and Republican state legislatures, but how did they get that way? Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell was elected in 2009, while Governors John Kasich (R-OH), Rick Scott (R-FL), Rick Snyder (R-MI), Tom Corbett (R-PA), and Scott Walker (R-WI) were all elected in 2010. With the exception of Florida’s Rick Scott, all of them succeeded Democratic governors, although Scott predecessor Charlie Crist is now a Democrat. Again, with the exception of Florida, all of these states had at least one Democratically-controlled legislative chamber in 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama was elected, and all have flipped to complete Republican control since then. What is wrong with the people in these states? Can’t they make up their minds?

As it turns out, a lot of them did make up their minds… to stay home.

I totally get that it's not as visible or exciting if there's not a would-be President of the United States on the ballot, but if Democrats want to roll back some of the awfulness that's gone down in some of these states, including the anti-choice misogynistic laws, they need to turn out and vote in primaries, midterms and odd-number years.