***Texas Republicans are governing as though they think they're the permanent majority party. The Democrats there used to think so, too. Well.***

The Democrats had the majority party for *150 years*. If the Republicans can hold it a third that long it will help change the shape of our state for the better.

And while its true that redistricting is supposed to occur after the census, the Democrats couldn't get their act together so it had to be drawn up by the courts. Since it is the legislature's job to draw the map the Republicans were simply doing their assigned duty.

Of course you won't ever hear the Democrats mention that they were the one's that dropped the ball.

I agree that it sets a bad precedent and opposed the move. Indeed, I'm no fan of partisan gerrymandering, period.

That said, this case was unusual, in that the Texas legislature didn't actually successfully redistrict in 2002. A court overruled their plan and imposed an different version on them. So, while unusual, the 2003 re-redistricting was the first legislatively created one ratified by the courts.

What really gripes me about this whole charade, is that not one media outlet starts out their report on this issue with the whole facts, or even includes the facts in their report. The Texas never finished redistricting at the last census. In fact all of the redictricting issues still pending are because of failures by state govs. to do their jobs.

Well, it's not so much that the legislatures aren't doing their jobs but that the courts have been given the power, via the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as amended and renewed) to impose their will on the legislature. That slows things down a mite.

Vodka:

I think you're off on this one. I agree with the three posts above.

It's not the GOP's fault that the prior state Legislature failed in its duty, nor is it their fault that activist judges legislated from the bench before the GOP took control of the body.

Besides, the GOP simply is responding to the scorched-Earth tactics of the other side.

Humiliated by their landslide loss in the 1984 election, the Democrats in the Senate blocked Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. The GOP kept on being a loyal, but agreeable, opposition party in the Senate.

Humiliated by their 1988 landslide loss to Bush Senior, the Senate Democrats abused their majority power and threatened the President literally to shut down the entire federal government unless he signed onto a major tax increase. He relented. Essentially, he had no choice. That turned out to be the first in a series of events that ultimately put Bill Clinton in the White House.

Despite the Democrats' horrific treatment of Bork and then Clarence Thomas, the GOP agreed to confirm far-left Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So, the Democrats naturally reponded in kind? Not. Bush 43 nominates Miguel Estrada to a federal appeals court -- an hispanic who finished No. 1 at Harvard Law School, for God's sake -- and the Democrats fillibuster. That is the first time in our nation's HISTORY that a fillibuster has been used against a judicial nominee. The Democrats then go on and fillibuster four additional nominees; including, an African-American female -- Janis Brown -- who rose up out of abject poverty in the segregated South.

In the Texas redistricting battle itself, the Democrats responded like any loyal opposition, right? They took the issue to the public; attempted to persuade; voted their minds; and then resolved to use it as a campaign issue in the next election? Uh, not. They literally absconded from the state!

Look, I know full well that partisan politics ultimately is a self-defeating mechanism. But the stark reality in this day and age is that the Democrats no longer are an opposition party. They are a loosely-knit cabal of far-left special interest groups whose only "value" is being in power; whatever the cost!

Will this ultimately wind up coming back to bite the Texas GOP (and perhaps others) in the ass? Sure, eventually. But those are the rules of the game at this point. And they are the rules promulgated, ratified, and then placed into practice, by the Democratic machine.

It's hard to shake someone's hand when they are about to punch you in the face!

I was living in Texas after the '90 census and the Democratic gerrymander that resulted. It's fair to say that this one is just payback for the last one a decade ago. The only permamnent solution is to decide the shape of the districts by some sort of mathematical formula imposed by a computer.

I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

The previous posts have it right.

This redistricting is to the 2000 post-census redistricting, as Gulf War II was to Gulf War I.

A clear parallel. GW II wasn't really a "new" war. We had only suspended hostilities with Iraq, pending their fulfillment of stipulated behaviors.

In that they failed these tests, the misnamed GW II ensued, which was really only the completion of GW I.

Similarly, the courts mandated a set of district boundaries after the 2000 Census redistricting logjammed and ended up before the courts.

In Texas, the legislature meets only every two years. This was their first opportunity to fulfull the mandate of the court, which had specified that the Legistlature remedy the boundaries as soon as it was practical to do so.

The donks have indeed spun this one masterfully, but the facts call their lies back into focus.

Jim
Sloop New Dawn
Galveston, TX

PS. The reformat looks good, but I did like the old banner better. And congrats on your 1.5 mil. Well deserved, sir.

Expecting either party to redistrict fairly is like expecting Bill Clinton to behave on Temptation Island. No party deserves sympathy for being screwed at redistricting time unless it is willing to live with a non-partisan redistricting commission, like in Iowa - which had more competitive House races in 2004 (4) than New York and California combined.

the Dhimmicracts did every other districting in the State of Texas.
Not one districting in texas was ever done by republicans.
Until now.
Basically all I have to say is that those whiny unamerican pieces of shit have had their turn. Now its our turn.
But those whiny shitheads don't comprehend such concepts as "fair play".
Maybe they will learn to understand "What comes around goes around".

Well, folks, sorry to be the dissenter, here, but...

I think our VodkaMan makes a very valid point when he states that the "majority turnover" precedent is what's really the problem here. The Repubs here do have a valid point regarding the failure of the Legislature to agree post census opening the way for the courts, but if you know the Lege like I do (I work for 'em, right here in Austin), you know that saying it was because the donks "dropped the ball" is highly inaccurate.

Until the session of this year, the R's had an equal say in squelching things like this, and turf issues and personal affiliations had as much to do with district lines as party. That's what Mr. DeLay and company have changed forever.

What personally hacks me about this thing is that if the Supremes don't jump in (likely), I'm in the new District 25. By half a city block.

Austin (a/k/a Last Bastion of White Dems in Texas) has been, under this plan, ruthlessly and deliberately sliced into three districts. The new 25 goes from the corner convenience store where I buy my col' beer all the way to the Rio Grande. That's a seven hour drive. I think the next Webster's Collegiate should use it as the illustration accompanying the definition of "gerrymandering," as opposed to that old Thomas Nast cartoon.

In Canada, parliamentary districts are called "ridings," because (in theory only - this is the origin of the term, language-wise) you as a member can put on your toque and your red coat and, like, get on your horse and visit a constituent in, like, one day, eh? Hell - whaddaya call the new 25? A "flight path?"

Dang it all. Let's say an R wins 25 (unlikely), and I'm unhappy with him or her (likely), so after I win the Lotto (erm, unlikely) I decide to run. Shoot, now I'm gonna have to spring me for a big ol' Lear Jet.

And VP's right about this, too. There are still some of use "yaller dawg" D's in Texas, and you bet we want payback.

And, BTW, that's a really cute yaller dawg y'got there, VP.

That redistricting be accomplished by the (small-d) democratically elected state legislature, rather than by an unelected, undemocratic, reluctant, and ill-equipped panel of three federal judges is a fairly important constitutional principle. The Dems had used the divided state government that existed in 2001 to deadlock the Legislature in order to protect white male Democratic incumbents whose seats were the product of a pro-Democrat gerrymander dating back to 1991. The districts created by the 2001 federal court decision -- by the court's own candid admission -- continued to favor Democrats, notwithstanding their loss of majority-party status in Texas because it explicitly protected incumbents of both parties, and there were more Democratic than Republican incumbents.

Texas voters rather emphatically weighed in on this issue in the 2002 election when they eliminated the divided state government that had permitted the 2001 stalemate, and instead put both legislative chambers and every statewide elected office into Republican hands. Yet because the Dems in the state legislature repeatedly fled the state to destroy a quorum, it still took three special sessions in 2003 to finally effectuate the will of the people as interpretted by a solid majority of their (small-d) democratically elected representatives.

The result of the Texas redistricting struggle is emphatically NOT a new precedent -- either legal or practical -- for legislative redistricting more than once in a decade. The legal ability for state legislatures to do that already existed; and that's not what Texas did in 2003.

If Democrats, as threatened, "retaliate" by seeking more-than-once-a-decade redistricting to favor their candidates in other states, THAT would be a break with tradition and a unilateral escalation of the partisan grudge-wars that characterize all gerrymandering. In yesterday's court decision, the panel pointedly noted that Congress has the clear constitutional authority to forbid that from happening and to limit states to one successful legislative redistricting per decade/census.

As for "red squad henry": If you read yesterday's opinion, the court explained very clearly why the elongated "bacon-strip" districts reaching from the border up to Austin were effectively made necessary in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They were a product of geography, population density, and historic voting patterns, not some whim. Given the Dems' race-baiting and hysteria about "disenfranchised minorities," you'll pardon me for not being too concerned about the possibility that your next Congressman may be a Hispanic from the Valley. Or perhaps you'll white male incumbent Lloyd Doggett of Austin, who's hustling to campaign to win one of the majority-minority Hispanic districts created in the new plan.

I've blogged about all these issues ad nauseum on my own blog -- we Texans have followed this soap opera closely for months -- so I won't eat more of your bandwidth than I already have. But I hope you'll reconsider your predictions, Mr. VodkaPundit, or at least lay the blame for possible further escalations where it would properly belong.

So red squad henry doesn't like his District 25, even though he'll continue to be represented by a Democrat as he was before. For many years, my Dallas-area district (5) was represented by a Democrat due to clever Democrat gerrymandering, much to my chagrin. But when the early '90s redistricting required a black district for EB Johnson, they had to pull minorities from Dist. 5 to pad her district. Halleluah! I finally got a GOP Congresman! By the way, the court was wrong in claiming the bizarre shape of the skinny south Texas districts was due to the need to move north to get population. Fact is, you could easily create two compact districts just using the Rio Grande Valley cities and Laredo -- no need to move further north. The skinny districts were created by Democrat gerrymandering to ensure that the heavy Hispanic vote in the Valley could be used to siphon off and dilute GOP voting further north, ensuring additional Democrats in Congress. But...having created such districts, they cannot be undone due to the Voting Rights Act.