Shot by Their Own Men

A tip o' the Brain to Citizens UnTied.

Truthout

While this might seem like just another instance of silly old Southern Republicans doing silly things to keep the good ole' boys back home happy, I would argue that it is emblematic of how the Republican Party is content to destroy itself, shattering itself on the petard of its own bigotry. The gerrymandering the Virginia Senate Republicans did just before Senator Stosch moved to adjourn for the day is helping it hoist that petard.

This is why the January 21 moment in Richmond is symbolic of why gerrymandering is not going to work for the GOP in the long term. So long as the GOP gambles on redistricting - often based on rather crassly corralling or breaking up areas predominantly based on color (and especially if it does so by playing as dirtily as they did in Virginia on MLK day) - it will ensure that some number of its politicians will take care to speak to the extremists, the crazies and the bigots in the party. In the age of the Internet, this gets noticed. If Republicans think that Hispanics and Asian Americans - or young voters, or non-Christians, or women - won't notice or mind Republican bigotry even if aimed at other groups, then they're in for a surprise. And don't forget about those unloved Republicans-in-name-only, aka RINOs, who keep leaving the party. The GOP is going to end up as a farm team to nowhere.

There's a final irony here. Just as the Republican Party is accidentally destroying itself through acts of gerrymandering and bigotry like commemorating Stonewall Jackson instead of Dr. King, one might note that something similar happened to old Stonewall himself.

You know how Jackson died, right?

At the Battle of Chancellorsville 150 years ago this coming May, Confederate troops accidentally shot him.

"Accidentally". Yeah, right. Today we call that "fragging".

If the Repugs wish to self-frag, I'm totally down wid it. And if they need to hoist themselves by their own tiny petards to get a better shot, I'm down wid dat too.