We've long contended that blue cities in red states are a cancer on the body politic that wields outsized influence over the state’s otherwise conservative voters.
In Texas, for example, statewide Democratic candidates focus their efforts in the handful of blue urban areas and ignore most of the rest of the state.
The Texas Tribune reports "Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%."
Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, carried a total of 235 of Texas’ 254 counties, while O’Rourke carried a measly 19.
Now the Texas Republican Party has proposed a solution to balance this disparity in a method based on the Constitution.
"Perhaps the most consequential [Republican Party] plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college."
Naturally, the Texas Tribune hates this idea because "Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office."
And crafting policies that would appeal to those rural counties is simply unthinkable for today’s leftist Democratic party.
In turn, we think it’s an excellent idea and even better, the proposal is modeled on the Electoral College, which has been successfully conducting presidential elections since the Founding.
Just as a national presidential candidate can’t run up a giant vote total in California and New York and ignore red state America and hope to win; a Texas statewide candidate won’t — if the Texas constitution is amended — be able to appeal solely to the lunatics in Austin and their howlers-at-the-moon in Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston and hope to carry the state.
This wasn’t the only good idea the Texas party had this year.
The other two were designed "to increase its party purity by approving two major rules changes: One would close the Republican primary elections so that only voters the party identifies as Republicans can participate.
"The other would bar candidates from the primary ballot for two years after they had been censured by the state party."
Our question is why should voters who don’t consider themselves Republicans be allowed to choose the candidates running on the Republican party ticket?
Members of Methodist Churches don’t get to vote on hiring the Baptist preacher.
The second provision is designed to force party discipline on people elected as Republicans. If one is a Republican officeholder whose performance in office is so bad the state’s Republican Party censures him for the bad performance, why should he be allowed to run as a Republican in the next election?
It sounds like deceiving the voters to us.
Broadening your appeal to include a majority of the state’s counties, making sure only Republicans vote in Republican primaries and making elected officials who run as party members remain accountable to the party seem like three solid ideas to us.
We hope other red states follow Texas’ lead.
Michael Reagan, the eldest son of President Reagan, is a Newsmax TV analyst. A syndicated columnist and author, he chairs The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Michael is an in-demand speaker with Premiere speaker's bureau. Read Michael Reagan's Reports — More Here.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian's Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now With Added Humor!)" Read Michael Shannon's Reports — More Here.