Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Redistricting Deviations

It'll be interesting to see what Joshua Micah Marshall comes up with here. The story of Texas legislators making a run for the border in order to prevent the formation of a quorum which would have then allowed for a vote on a Republican-sponsored congressional redistricting plan is a fun one; as Tapped says, it makes for great political theater. But I'll be watching what Josh writes in his space, because he may be correct: the Democratic legislators in Texas may have taken somewhat extreme action simply because a real (if uncodified in law) norm was being violated, one that has been in place across the nation for over a century: namely, that absent other considerations (lawsuits, etc.), redistrciting only happens after a census, once every ten years. Of course, one could take this in several different ways: on the one hand, another example of how the Republican juggernaut is tearing up the country's political standards in pursuit of complete domination; on the other, another example of the Republicans' brilliant determination to break down standards which they believe have implicitly served the interest the semi-permanent, mostly unelected liberal establishment. I'll be talking more about this, probably.