Republicans Can Only Hold Power By Cheating

Gerrymandering has been around for years, but when you get right down to it, is it just a way for Republicans to hold power? Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Dear Farron, shortly after the election in November and New York, Democrats said the reason we lost the four districts was because of gerrymandering. Is this true? How could they not have known that would happen? How can we end this toxic practice after every census? Gerrymandering is something that, of course, is as old as the United States itself is, and that is definitely a problem. We have had Supreme Court rulings, we've had state Supreme Court rulings, we have had changes to the way things are done, changes again, once a Democrat or Republican takes over from the previous Democrat or Republican. So how do we end this toxic practice? Honestly, I don't think we can. And I never like giving answers that basically say, eh, nothing you can do about it. Here it is, deal with it. But gerrymandering, as I said, has been around since the beginning of this country.

It is ingrained in who we are and it sucks. The only way we could get out of this system, and I don't even know if this is truly possible because of state's rights, but it would have to be some kind of, um, constitutional amendment that created, you know, an anti gerrymandering board to redraw the districts and the states. But again, I don't even think you could get that done because the states do have the authority under the Constitution itself to do this on their own without the federal government getting to look over their shoulders in many instances. So a constitutional amendment to undo that is the only possible remedy. You know, you couldn't pass a law through Congress, it's gonna get tossed out as unconstitutional due to state's rights. Um, you could do it state by state, but then again, you have this patchwork thing, kind of like we had with Covid restrictions, I think as a great way to look at it.

So if your state over here, they've gotten rid of gerrymandering, they've got this panel that gets to draw the districts and everything's even, nothing gets to look weird, great. But the state next to you, they don't want to do it. So they're gonna stage gerrymandered on the other side of you. That state says same thing, we're not gonna do it. So what good is having one non gerrymandered state when you've got 49 others who say, Hey, good for you state, but we're not gonna pay attention. We're not gonna follow suit. So to get rid of the problem, it has to be a nationwide thing. Like that's a given, but it also has to be in the form of a constitutional amendment. Otherwise, it is going to get smacked down by the courts. Uh, probably with a quickness we've never seen in this country. It's very clear that states have the constitutional authority to draw their own districts.

So in the meantime, you know, until we can get, the whole country behind this movement basically is we continue to call it out. You know, one of the things I love talking about when I mentioned Dan Crenshaw is his horribly gerrymandered district. Uh, that basically looks like a comet with a long, windy tale. Dan Crenshaw wouldn't be in Congress were it not for gerrymandering, like we wouldn't know who that guy is. And of course, he is a major player in the Republican party today. So gerrymandering has given us, you know, some pretty horrible politicians and unfortunately I don't see a change to that on the horizon right now. Thanks for

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