Heres a profile of the 80 members of the Republican suicide caucus, who signed the letter pressing for a threat of government shutdown to defund Obamacare; and have been driving the bus for the past two weeks: These 80 members (76 men and 4 women) represent 18% of the entire House and a third of the 233 House Republ...icans. They were elected with 14.5 million of the 118 million votes cast in House elections last November, or 12% of the total. In all, they represent 18% of the population of the US. Their districts are, on average, 79% white, as are they (79 out of 80); and, as the country as a whole has become more diverse, these districts are becoming less so. One half of them are in the south. As would be expected, their districts went overwhelmingly for Romney. In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed. In previous eras, ideologically extreme minorities could be controlled by party leadership. What’s new about the current House of Representatives is that party discipline has broken down on the Republican side. On the most important policy questions, ones that most affect the national brand of the party, Boehner has lost his ability to control his caucus. As a result, an ideological faction of 18% of the House, representing only 12% of American voters, but aided by outside interest groups, can now set the national agenda.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 21:18:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015