Republican structural advantage: How GOP moves right & still

wins...despite NOT reflecting the views of America or sometimes even the GOP.

From 2015, still relevant, in light of the coming "NOTHING" to be done by this Congress.

"In the 25th anniversary issue of this magazine, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson offered an explanation of what they call the "no-cost extremism" of current Republican politics. How does the GOP continue to move rightward and still win, they ask, despite the American public's opposition to much of the party's agenda? "Poll after poll," they point out, "shows that major GOP positions are not all that popular. Among swing voters, there has been nothing like the party's right turn. … On many social issues, such as gay marriage, middle-of-the-road voters have actually moved left. Yet the Republican Party keeps heading right. … In a 50-50 nation, Republicans have learned how to have their extremist cake and eat it too."...

The U.S. Senate was designed to over-represent small states, but only recently has that bias been a Republican advantage. During the mid-20th century, the GOP regularly elected senators from large states such as California, Illinois, and New York. But during the past half-century, as a result of the GOP's dominance of small states and loss of big states, the party has consistently held a higher share of Senate seats than the share of American citizens who vote for its candidates.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Capitol Hill, Republicans have also been able to outperform their share of the vote. In 2012, House Speaker John Boehner maintained his majorities even though Republican House candidates received a million-plus fewer votes nationwide than Democratic House candidates captured. As Hacker and Pierson correctly note, despite losing the national popular vote in that year's presidential race, Mitt Romney carried more House districts than Barack Obama did. This gap between national totals and district outcomes reflects two developments, one demographic and the other political. Democratic voters are now "inefficiently" distributed because they have become increasingly concentrated in cities, and the GOP has been able to capitalize on population patterns through the strategic use of partisan gerrymandering....

In a country where registration is voluntary and voting takes place on a workday, the party with older and more-affluent voters enjoys a boost at the polls. It's no coincidence that Republicans tend to oppose early or same-day registration but support stricter voter-ID laws to solve the phantom problem of voter fraud. ...

Faced with this policy intransigence, Democrats often turn to the courts as a savior institution that can break legislative logjams and deliver liberal policy outcomes. But Republicans do not necessarily suffer when Democrats win in court; in fact, the GOP often benefits electorally and politically from landmark liberal court victories. As constitutional scholar Mark Tushnet argues in his book Why the Constitution Matters, the value for many elected officials of landmark court rulings is that these edicts often absolve legislators and executives of having to resolve controversial policy disputes. Elected politicians can simply say the courts forced their hands."

prospect.org/power/republican-structural-advantage/

Money, gerrymandering, money, racism, money, voting hurdles, money, gerrymandering...

They're doing what they were designed to do. Keep the mostly white mostly male minority in power over the rest of us.


""Nothing" is the result American politics is best geared to deliver. Nothing is easy to achieve because of checks and balances in the American system and the generally awesome staying power of the status quo. If a series of attempts to change law or policy fail and nothing is done, the status quo "wins.""