DAVID MARCUS: Prada bag power grab as elites hijack Old Dominion
Some 163 years ago this June, the people of what is now West Virginia had had enough of the Old Dominion and the wealthy planters who thought the nation’s rules did not apply to them. As a result, today, West Virginia Republican voters have a strong voice in Congress, while those in the mother state just had theirs stripped away.
Let’s be completely clear. After Tuesday’s narrow electoral victory for the anti-American redistricting designed to give Virginia, a state that is 45% Republican, a 10-1 advantage in its House of Representatives delegation, Democrats are capable of anything, no matter how immoral or duplicitous.
And it's not just the politicians this time. It was Democratic voters, mostly in the wealthy, elite northern counties, who cynically chose to disenfranchise their poorer neighbors to the south.
Just as elite Virginians from places like Fairfax and Richmond went to war in 1860 to defy Republicans and maintain what they viewed as the moral necessity of slavery, this week, their heirs, those same Virginia Democrats, dropped their own nuke on democracy.
VIRGINIA DEMS FLIP ON GERRYMANDERING, BLAME TRUMP FOR REDISTRICTING REVERSAL
Today, the issue is not slavery, although, let’s be honest, the illegal immigrant nannies in Loudoun County come at a discount price. But rather, Democrats would have us believe that President Donald Trump is such a threat to America that rules must be broken to stop him.
Funny, they said exactly the same thing about Abraham Lincoln.
Democrats in the Mother of States knew damn well just how outrageous this new redistricting is. It's why they never showed the new map in an ad, or ever mentioned the new 10-1 D to R ratio, and insisted that this radical act of so-called fairness is only temporary.
DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST SAYS PARTY LACKS 'MORAL AUTHORITY' ON TEXAS REDISTRICTING FIGHT
The temporary argument was particularly disgusting, as if stealing people’s votes once in a while is fine. Perhaps Virginia should change its motto from "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Ever such to tyrants) to "Tyrannidem Aliquando" (Tyranny Sometimes).
Democrats have argued that they are simply trying to keep up with the redistricting in Texas, but Texas didn’t give the GOP 90% of its House seats. It didn’t set up a situation where one wealthy city like Fairfax has an Octopus grip on poorer, rural voters.
Basically, the people in Virginia who get dirt under their fingernails at work were told by screeching, rich, White ladies with Prada bags that they have no say in Congress anymore. In grand old Virginia fashion, the elites will rule, the peasants will serve.
Professional Republicans, and the politicians who pay them, need this to be a wake-up call. As I reported last week from Southern Virginia, the state and national GOP weren’t just outspent and outworked, they barely seemed to try.
GOP insiders tell me that a handful of political consulting firms handle almost all GOP campaigns, including this flaccid effort to stop the gerrymandering. But these lovable losers, the same ones who warned us about Trump, who actually wins, get paid whatever the results.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who thinks he is a pastor, not a politician, insists that we still cannot blow up the filibuster to pass the Save America Act and protect our elections, because if he does, then Democrats may eventually do it, too.
With all due respect to Thune, the Democrats just disenfranchised almost every Republican in Virginia. They aren’t going to respect the filibuster. To continue to suggest they will is simple-minded madness at this point.
It is time for Republicans to think bigger, to realize the enormity of the fight they are in. Proposals to add lefty Arlington and Alexandria to Washington, D.C., should absolutely be on the table.
Further, plans by Republican West Virginia state Sen. Chris Rose to offer about 30 border counties in Virginia the chance to join the Mountain State should be vigorously pursued.
People like to make jokes about my adopted home state of West Virginia, and yeah, we might be poorer and less educated than other states, but we damn well don’t let wealthy elites steal the very rights that gave our home its bloody birth.
Those men back in 1863 chose wisely when they created West "By God" Virginia, and it is because of them that I woke up Wednesday morning with my voting rights intact. That is more than I can say for my neighbors in the Old Dominion, who have returned to rule by the rich and powerful.