Tea Party finally farting itself to death?

[Ryantology]

The biggest internecine scare in the GOP has been established GOP dinosaurs suffering primary challenges from Tea Party psychos.

Let's see how well that's working out in the Senate races. Tea Party candidates in italics.

(KS) Milton Wolf (-56) vs. Pat Roberts.

(KY) Matt Bevin (-26 in polls) vs. Mitch McConnell (seriously dude, fucking Obama's approval rating in Kentucky is higher than the Turtle and this is the best you can do??)

(MS) Chris McDaniel (no poll data) vs. Thad Cochran: Cochran may actually lose this one. I can't find poll numbers, but McDaniel is raising money at a prodigious rate.

(SC) Linsdey Graham vs. several teahadists, none of whom have come close to presenting any kind of fundraising challenge. No poll data.

(TN) Joe Carr vs. Lamar Alexander: Alexander has raised about eight times what Carr has, and is not considered to be in any danger.

(TX) Steve Stockman vs. John Cornyn: Stockman has raised less than $50k to Cornyn's $7.5m and, because he's a lunatic, he seems to be trying his hardest to lose this in spite of having no chance anyway.

(WY) Liz Cheney vs. Mike Enzi: Liz's campaign was a disaster and she has withdrawn.

[Minimalist]

The poor tea bagging shits. The only thing they have in the republicunt party are the votes.

[TaraJo]

Let's see how well that's working out in the Senate races. Tea Party candidates in italics.

I bolded the important part. The Senate isn't where the problem is. In fact, the Democrats have control of the senate, largely because you can't really gerrimander it, which forces both parties to field more moderate, mainstream friendly candidates.

The House is a different story. If your district is 85% Republican (which is pretty damn common, especially in big states like Texas or Florida), the only way a Republican candidate is going to lose is in the primaries, where they lose by being too moderate. The general election will be a cake-walk for any politician who happens to put an 'R' at the end of his name.

[Raeven]

The House is a different story. If your district is 85% Republican (which is pretty damn common, especially in big states like Texas or Florida), the only way a Republican candidate is going to lose is in the primaries, where they lose by being too moderate. The general election will be a cake-walk for any politician who happens to put an 'R' at the end of his name.

This raises an important question I've been meaning to ask, because I have no idea: How do we fix gerrymandering? It's a big problem and has been for a long time, yet I've never heard anyone propose a solution to it. Thoughts?

[Tonus]

This raises an important question I've been meaning to ask, because I have no idea: How do we fix gerrymandering? It's a big problem and has been for a long time, yet I've never heard anyone propose a solution to it. Thoughts?

The biggest roadblock is partisan politics, which means it is very difficult to fix. Outside of that it would be very easy to map out districts and group them by a set of reasonable criteria. But the allure of carving out odd shapes for the specific purpose of building or maintaining political power is too great.

[là bạn điên]

The House is a different story. If your district is 85% Republican (which is pretty damn common, especially in big states like Texas or Florida), the only way a Republican candidate is going to lose is in the primaries, where they lose by being too moderate. The general election will be a cake-walk for any politician who happens to put an 'R' at the end of his name.

This raises an important question I've been meaning to ask, because I have no idea: How do we fix gerrymandering? It's a big problem and has been for a long time, yet I've never heard anyone propose a solution to it. Thoughts?

We don't have a problem in the UK with it because we have an independent electoral commission who redraws boundaries every twenty years or so.

[TaraJo]

The House is a different story. If your district is 85% Republican (which is pretty damn common, especially in big states like Texas or Florida), the only way a Republican candidate is going to lose is in the primaries, where they lose by being too moderate. The general election will be a cake-walk for any politician who happens to put an 'R' at the end of his name.

This raises an important question I've been meaning to ask, because I have no idea: How do we fix gerrymandering? It's a big problem and has been for a long time, yet I've never heard anyone propose a solution to it. Thoughts?

The easiest way would probably be to divide congressional districtsby zip code. Specifically, a congressional district is supposed to have about 700,000 people in it. So, we start with the zip-code 00501, which is the lowest numbered zip code. Does that one, by itself, make up 700,000 people? If no, we add on another zip code; when we finally hit 700,000 people or when we get close enough, we have our congressional district right there. It's going to be more difficult, if not impossible, to gerrimander zip codes.

But there's another problem to fixing gerrimandering: the people who can fix it got into power because of gerrimandering. If they were going to change the rules, they could easily change the rules in such a way that they wouldn't be in power anymore. If we can ever find a way to get the political leaders to vote to fix a system that put them in power in the first place, we'll be able to fix a lot of problems, this one included.

[SteelCurtain]

Yeah, realistically gerrymandering is not going anywhere any time soon. It's a self tightening screw. The people who would have to change it have no impetus to change it, and the people voting in horribly gerrymandered districts are getting what they want.

Shame.

[Minimalist]

The people who would have to change it have no impetus to change it

Oh there's a way to get them to change. The problem is that people will have to get off their lazy asses, stop posting silly shit on Facebook and DO SOMETHING.

Sadly, I don't see the American electorate any where near that point.

[TaraJo]

Oh there's a way to get them to change. The problem is that people will have to get off their lazy asses, stop posting silly shit on Facebook and DO SOMETHING.

Sadly, I don't see the American electorate any where near that point.

We got up and tried to change things with Occupy Wall Street and it was shot down. If we're going to really change things, we need more than just an angry mob; we need a very well organized angry mob; a mob that's media savy and knows how to effectively use online media. We need the mob to be intelligent and understands politics. It takes a lot more effort to change a system that's already in place than it does to maintain a system, no matter how broken it is.