When Republicans last held a governing trifecta in Virginia, the Senate map was an explicit Democrat gerrymander that we had been able to crack by 1 seat, but we could hardly pass anything because we had too many vulnerable Republicans in Democrat-leaning districts that didn’t want to vote on most controversial legislation.
So the State Senate passed a mid-decade redistricting bill that would have wiped out several powerful Democrats, massively expanded our majority, and guarantee the GOP control of the chamber for nearly a decade.
When the bill got to the House of Delegates, the Republican Speaker killed it on the floor because he didn’t think it was in keeping with the “Virginia Way”.
Yes. A Republican Speaker of the House killed a GOP redistricting bill that would have overturned a Democrat gerrymander and enable us to actually pass conservative legislation when we held unified control over Virginia’s government.
Fast forward 15 years later and Democrats are redrawing the Congressional map to deliver the most lopsided gerrymander in the entire country just one month after they took take unified power in Virginia.
I cannot think of a more illustrative story which embodies how each of the two parties operates more than this.
Republicans are losers. They’re addicted to losing. They equate losing with virtue. The more they lose, the more virtuous they become. And as the country burns to the ground, their children and grandchildren grow up in a diminished society that hates them, and every other principle they claim to believe in gets sacrificed on the altar of progressivism, they get to sit back and pride themselves on the fact they never had to stain their hands with that dishonorable business we call ruling.
@DjsokeSpeaking talarico’s juice is much less of a question than i think you’re giving him credit for. allred is a more known quantity but imo talarico is just as good if not better than allred