It looks like the GOP might not get greedy in the redistricting process for Pennsylvania. That’s a good thing. When they tried it 10 years ago, the Democrat who was supposed to lose his seat in a “safe” GOP district with an incumbent managed to hang on. And he’s still there. That’s a lesson the party folks needed to learn since the GOP has control of the House, Senate, and Governor’s office.
Politico reports that they believe the redistricting process will rework PA-4 & PA-12 – Jason Altmire & Mark Critz (used to be John Murtha’s district). On the gun issue, it’s a not really a loss. Both are good on the gun votes. On one hand, we lose one pro-gun Democrat in the process, but we would likely lose one anyway if they tried to merge any of the seats with the anti-gun Rep. Mike Doyle in PA-14. It also makes the most sense since that is the corner of the state that is actually losing population – not “not gaining as rapidly” as is the case in most lose-a-seat scenarios, but actually losing.
They are also talking about creating a very long district for PA-17 to include Scranton. It would tighten up the Democratic seat, but give a chance to make Lou Barletta in PA-11 a little more safe. The downside for gun owners is that it sets up a potential primary challenge to pro-gun Democrat Tim Holden by an extremely anti-gun Scranton mayor.
Here in our little corner of the world, they don’t seem to want to pit two Philly Dems against each other. It makes sense given the population numbers. It does appear, according to Politico, that they will dump the heavily Democratic neighborhoods from our district, as well as PA-7 and PA-6 – Pat Meehan & Jim Gerlach. That would be very handy, indeed.
And for any Iowans, get ready for your big day tomorrow!
Not only not greedy, but they are lacking a spine when it comes to the budget. I really need Boehner to shows some testosterone when it comes to cuts.
Also (OT), I heard Smirk-comish was going to talk about Brady at 4pm today. Didn’t hear it – I hate that guy – but I think he was gonna be pro-Brady.
In redistricting, it’s important that the state and local GOP folks play it safe instead of being bold. Being bold gives the risky seats to Dems. (Patrick Murphy won this Congressional seat by 1,500 votes his first time around, and those came out of the little portion of Philly they gave us.) This is a 10-year commitment, and you have to hope your party has some power in 2021 to do it all over again or at to at least oppose a redistricting bloodbath.
Things will really be interesting at the state level. We’ll be gaining some state rep & senate seats in this corner of the state.
Virginia is working on theirs and it sounds like it could get ugly.
After years and years of living the Gerrymandered Lifestyle it’s not helping.
Let GOPs be GOPs, whatever the big-hair society-conscious Sosh-set G&T drinking strivers they may be – you have to wait and see – the outing is good for them.
Let DEM be DEM, as wild-eyed Socialist and fuzzy bearded radical as they can be – or not – your DEM is not necessarily the rad-DEMs like Boxer and Pelosi that move-out to CA and take over the Machine like we had happen.
Go for transparency first to light-up the cockroaches. Oddly enough, because of where they live, some of our DEM-party likes them some guns and some of our GOP don’t. It’s all a game of pandering.
It’s not good to get greedy because the tables WILL turn –
they’re politician’s first after-all, and you might wind up like California, where the CA-GOP and the CA-DEMs each decided to live and get rich with a certain (and very certain it truly is) share of the pie. And share they do, while everything is collapsing around them and us.
They each get their own set of fiefdoms and cronyism and entrenched interests which they play-off against the citizenry to their own advantage. They each still have their own private country-clubs to inhabit where deals are brokered and regular people are not invited.
Go for transparency first to flush-out the cockroaches.