A GOP Win? Not on Your Life

This map should scare the hell out of every Republican in America.

This remarkable assessment of the recent state and national elections by hardcore Republican Chris Ladd (in the Houston Chronicle) should give heart to everybody in the country who didn't vote for the GOP. It is counter to much of the 100-year-Reich chatter we've been hearing since the election and is quite blunt in telling Republicans to enjoy the ride right now because it's going to be a short one ... the numbers say so.

Ladd's breakdown of the results--accomplished with historically low turnout, voter suppression that should be (and may eventually be ruled) illegal and a radical right-wing base that always votes--show temporary gains in traditional states, but losses in key centers that are telling for the future.

Ladd fears that Republicans, caught in the celebration of the moment, have no clue that the grizzly bear is around the corner and it's hungry. He says the GOP has no shot at the presidency in 2016 and that it will lose the Senate and probably the House, as well. His home state of Texas ("Baptistan," he calls it) holds a tenth of the House seats and he says that there are no white Democrats left in Congress from the old Confederacy. That's the GOP base.

He says Texas is on the edge of a monumental financial collapse if oil prices continue to fall because its economy is "roughly as diverse and modern as Nigeria, Iran or Venezuela." All oil all the time. That's why the climate change denying. It's about Texas' economy. And it could eventually mean that Texas' obsession with social issues would jump in the back seat while economic collapse replaced those issues.

If you read one political piece this week--whatever your political affiliation--this is a good one to pull out because it speaks truths that are so obvious and so hotly denied that they can't be ignored.