(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Fanatic Also Rises, And Would Be In Line to the Constitutional Succession of a Global Superpower. [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-07 That’s right, I’m talking about Jim Jordan and the possibility that he could successfully become Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ffs, this man was involved with the Willard Hotel planning to subvert the Election 2020 congressional certification on January 6, 2021! He’s Steve Bannon’s boy. Imagine that. How could this come to pass? The better question is, Why have we collectively allowed our electoral system to become perverted enough that an anti-democratic, anti-constitutional, extremist is this close to being placed in line to rule a global superpower? That, my friends, is a question that can only be answered by understanding how a person like Jim ‘Gym’ Jordan, partisan fanatic, accused (if unindicted) witness to the sodomy of teenage boys, and Trump loyalist that he is, could even achieve becoming elected into public office at all? Anyone old enough to remember the old Lyndon LaRouche picnic tables outside shopping mall parking lots in the 1980s and 1990s, knows where Jim Jordan comes from...and belongs again. Those right wing zealots of the Reagan era were considered ‘fringe’ because, while they made a lot of noise, they were zeroes when it came to attracting mainstream voters, or attracting cash from a pre-Citizens United fundraising environment. But mostly, it was their district voters. Lyndon LaRouche had his passionate followers, to be sure, saying Reagan was ‘too easy’ on the Commies, too friendly with Gorbachev, and too profligate with the national debt. Same-o, same-o. We’ve been hearing this mantra for decades before and decades after Reagan. But, come election day, these ‘LaRouchites’ would get swamped in districts that had a decent cross-section of voters that didn’t agree, and that also cared more about the responsible administration of public resources and the spending of their tax dollars to maintain them, than they did on the ideological purity of anti-communism, and simplistic notions of eliminating the structural debt of a nation. But Citizens United v FEC happened (2010). Shelby v Holder (2013) happened. And finally, Rucho v Common Cause (2019) happened. Fundraising was no longer an issue; the principle of federal oversight over district maps before they were implemented via the Section V ‘pre-clearance’ clause of the VRA was significantly restricted; and the practice of partisan gerrymandering was considered ‘beyond’ a federal interest for the courts to adjudicate. Meanwhile, during the span of years those three SCOTUS cases were decided, something else was implemented by the Republican Party: REDMAP Strategy 2010 (since updated to 2020). The nation’s first ever national strategy to cheat the American voter from their representation in state and federal legislatures on the basis of “the responsible administration of public resources and the spending to maintain them”. Instead, REDMAP allowed the partisan fanatics to win public office in districts that were manufactured with maps designed to help loser-candidates like Jordan achieve what would’ve been impossible without the partisan gerrymander. Gerrymandering allowed district maps to be made with pre-selected voters. A lot like fake poker games can be ‘won’ by marking the cards of your opponents. That’s how Jim Jordan, and others like him, like Kevin McCarthy, enter the picture of American politics. Without the currency of performative partisanship that moots the district election (aka a ‘safe seat’) in favor of the district primary, which is the place where one party decides who will represent them in the general election...and which no longer matters in a gerrymandered district. Under normal conditions, it will always be the party and person who won the primary. In other words, we’ve created a system that selects for Extremism while it removes whatever leverage political parties once had over party members through the disbursement of campaign cash. The party and the nation are victims of a cohort of freelancing partisan extremists, divorced from the party apparatus when they choose to be, and divorced from any political pressure coming from outside their manufactured district-of-partisans. We all know that Jim Jordan is an extremist. He supported a rogue president who was planning to interfere with the final step of a national election, even when he knew that intelligence sources were not finding actual evidence of election fraud. Yet, Jordan functioned as a whip to his Freedom Caucus, on behalf of that rogue president, convincing them to ‘go along’ with the fiction that unsubstantiated ‘questions’ were enough to challenge the official state certifications of the 2020 Election, despite knowing the truth. That there was no evidence of fraud, beyond failing to meet their expectations of winning Trump's reelection. And now Jim Jordan stands — thanks to a national strategy to cheat voters out of their rightful representation — as partisan fanaticism personified, next in line to the most powerful office on the planet, after the Vice President. This is not a good place for our system of government to be. For 2024, we all need to create abnormal conditions in districts where a structural gerrymander can be swamped out of being a ‘safe’ district for one party. But only if turnout is higher than expected for the disenfranchised party, or if turnout is suppressed for the favored party. Needless to say, we have our work cut out for us. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/7/2197923/-A-Fanatic-Also-Rises-And-Would-Be-In-Line-to-the-Constitutional-Succession-of-a-Global-Superpower?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/