How Losers Can Win: Change the Rules

GOP Wants to Change
the Rules

If a team can't win an important game on a level playing field, it probably needs to replace some of its players and coaches and definitely change  its game plan for the next contest. Most would consider such an approach as a logical consequence of a decisive loss.

But not the Republican Party. Although they recognize their welfare-for-the-wealthy philosophy is out of touch with that of mainstream America and also realize they are falling farther and farther behind on the demographic front, they are not considering changing their players, coaches or strategies. No sir.  The GOP wants "to fix" the game by changing the rules in such a way that the team with the low score wins the game, the minority controls the majority. (After all, that is the way it is at their exclusive country clubs. Low score wins.)

Precisely what the GOP has in mind is to change the way electoral votes are counted in some key swing states, but not all states. In states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida, they want to prevent the states' electoral votes from going to the candidate who wins the most votes. They want the electoral votes to be divided based on congressional districts -- districts which due to two years of gerrymandering on their part assure the GOP of the most "safe" districts. Therefore, in a state like Ohio it would have been possible for Obama to win the popular vote, but lose in Electoral votes.

On the other hand, the GOP only wants to change the rules in a few hand-picked states. They want to keep the solidly "red" states as "winner-take-all" states. So much for fairness.

The American public should not be surprised by such GOP Machiavellian schemes. This is the party which tried to suppress the vote in the 2012 Presidential election by passing ID laws to solve a problem which even they had to admit did not exist, restricted early voting opportunities, and limited voting facilities thus forcing people to stand in line for hours to vote.

If they get away with this current attempt to game the system, what will these unscrupulous Republican scalawags come up next? Perhaps they will come up with even more egregiously undemocratic ideas:

• base the number of electoral votes on acreage rather than population. Alaska would have 16.5 electoral votes for every one vote Illinois would have.
• base the electoral votes on the number of assault weapons in a state.
• permit every multi-billionaire to have one electoral vote  each.
• give each state an extra electoral vote for every 20 Latino families they break up.
• give states, like Texas,  with the highest rate of executions extra electoral votes.

Ridiculous? Of course, but so are the GOP attempts to subvert the will of the people.