Moe Lane

That’s the current number of state legislative chambers* that the GOP will be controlling, starting next year: there are still five state legislative chambers still undecided, so the number could go as high as 59 of 99.  That represents a flip of eighteen state chambers (and the gain of both houses in the state legislature in six states) by the GOP; couple that with a  +7 to +10 gain in governorships and it was a good night for the Republicans on the state level.

This is important for two reasons (besides the obvious one that this makes it easier to pass conservative/Republican policies): first, it cuts deeply into the available pool for up-and-coming Democratic legislators who would like to be Federal Congressmen and Senators – or, for that matter, governors.  Second, it neatly spokes the wheel of the Democrats’ long-term project to have control over the redistricting process.  In 2011, the redistricting process will require the maps to be redrawn in eighteen states; and it was always the goal of the Democratic party to have unilateral oversight over that process, the better to eliminate troublesome Republicans via gerrymandering.  Thanks largely to the RGA, that’s a lot less of a problem than it was before: of the eighteen states that are going to gain/lose seats, at least thirteen will have Republican governors, which will help keep the shenanigans down.

In short: Tuesday was a great night for the GOP, on pretty much every level that you would care to name.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Nebraska has an unicameral legislature.

The problem is that they don’t want to have to read ten thousand indignant emails, so they hid that as well as they could. The title (“State polls show gathering storm“) is nicely non-specific, the only actual politician quoted is a Republican, and then there’s this paragraph:

The dismal polling doesn’t reveal much about which political party will pay the price in November. And it’s hard to pinpoint how voters will react, since places like California, Connecticut and Rhode Island currently have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures. In Pennsylvania, the governor is a Democrat while control of the legislature is divided between the two major parties.

That was the paragraph that made me decide to go look up the state legislatures on Wikipedia, in fact. And, lo! Of the seven states mentioned in the article:

…the Democrats control all of the state houses/assemblies, and all but one of the state senates. Often by a lot.  And while gubernatorial races will certainly have an effect on state legislature ones this fall, it remains that anti-incumbent sentiment will tend to hurt more the party in power.  Particularly when the party in power favors the policies that are generating the anti-incumbent sentiment.  To give just one example: we’re not seeing a mass movement out there calling for more governmental interference in the health care system – and believe me, the Left has been trying to generate one.   While a Republican candidate or office holder may or may not be able to tap into the mass movement that is calling for less interference, it’s not precisely easy for a Democratic candidate to do so… and not very likely at all for a Democratic incumbent.

But, again: if the Politico actually wrote all of that out they’d get a ridiculous amount of hate mail.  So they didn’t.

Moe Lane

PS: If that’s not enough to make you vote a party-line ticket in November, consider this: redistricting will be coming up, soon.  Some of these legislatures are looking forward to the opportunity to eliminate troublesome Republican Congressional Districts.  Hard to do that if they don’t control the legislatures…

Crossposted to RedState.