GOP: Voting Overrated

House Republicans have pulled extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act off the calendar, due to objections from assorted nitwits like Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia. It's hillarious in a sad way to see Southern Republicans fighting the VRA, considering that it (and more to the point, the first Bush Administration's unique interpretation of it) lead directly to GOP control of the House. Bush I's Justice Department mandated a racial quota system in order to preclear redistricting plans back in 1990; in other words, if your state's population was 15% African-American, then by Golly, 15% of the your congressional districts had to be majority African-American, leading to the kind of bizarre, twisted bug-splatter-pattern districts that were later tossed out by the Supreme Court. Map-makers ended up packing minorities into some districts, thus decreasing the Democratic margin in neighboring districts held by white Democrats, particularly in the South. These white, usually moderate Southern Democrats were slaughtered in electoral droves in 1994.