‘If Republicans fail to fight back nationally … we will find ourselves in a perpetual minority for a generation…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After two recent victories for Democrats in their “sue-till-blue” effort to undo GOP advantages in red states, former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is calling on Republicans to “wake up.”
Walker recently assumed a key role with the National Republican Redistricting Trust, intended to be a counterpart to former Attorney General Eric Holder‘s National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
On Monday, Fox News published an op–ed from Walker urging his fellow conservatives to be aware of how the Left’s blatant power-grab was playing out right under their noses.
Holder and former President Barack Obama “have spent years and millions of dollars selling the false narrative that Democrats draw ‘fair maps’ while any and all Republican-drawn maps are ‘partisan gerrymanders,'” Walker said.
“While rhetorically cute, their primary goal has nothing to do with fighting gerrymandering as they repeatedly claim, but to put redistricting in the hands of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats and lifetime-appointed judges,” he said.
The Holder gerrymandering group—first formulated during the 2016 Democratic National Convention by key liberal players, including then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe—had a significant impact in the 2018 races that helped give the House of Representatives its current Democratic majority.
It initially had released a list targeting about a dozen red states during the 2020 races, but it appears to be expanding its goals in real time.
Activist-liberal judicial panels recently ruled against the district maps in Michigan and Ohio—two crucial swing states that helped carry the elections of both Obama and President Donald Trump.
The Holder-run NDRC also appears to be wielding an ever-increasing level of political influence after Obama’s former campaign arm, Organizing for Action, was brought into its fold.
That move assures the NDRC not only financial resources and other campaign-related infrastructure, but a massive distribution list of social-justice-warriors ready to mobilize at its beck-and-call.
The group has divided into multiple layers, including a nonprofit fund that does not need to disclose its donor lists and a super-PAC that has the ability to spend unlimited funds to promote the candidates of its choice—sometimes without their consent.
Walker said the current effort was a win–win for the well-heeled Left.
“Win or lose they are happy to spend their money on lawyers just for the talking points their liberal judges and academics give them to use on cable news and social media,” he said.
“They are more interested in winning the battle of the courtroom in front of friendly judges than winning the battle of ideas before the voters.”
Walker—whose own election loss last year came following such a Democrat-led gerrymandering effort in Wisconsin, cautioned on what the implications would be if the Right did not counter the efforts.
“If Republicans fail to fight back nationally … we will find ourselves in a perpetual minority for a generation,” he said.
The Supreme Court in March heard arguments surrounding two cases—in Maryland and North Carolina—that Republicans hoped would lead to a broader ruling in their favor.
“The Supreme Court can and should swiftly bring clarity and restore reason to what has been profoundly flawed processes,” Walker said.
However, with some of the conservative judges wavering, there remained the possibility that the decision could swing the other way, or perhaps that a delayed ruling may arrive too late to undo the damage in time for next year’s election.
Moreover, such a verdict would apply only to federal districts and not to those of state legislators, who often are responsible for drawing the electoral maps.
“State legislatures, who are elected and accountable to the people they serve, have the long-standing right to draw their own districts, for their own state, as they see fit within the confines of the law,” Walker said.
But by using liberal-leaning state Supreme Courts to force redistricting of those legislators, the Democrats could continue kicking the can down the road even after a U.S. Supreme Court loss and, effectively, redraw their own gerrymandered (and, by then, constitutionally protected) maps in 2021.
“We must keep Democrats from hijacking the United States Constitution to achieve their partisan ends,” Walker said. “If we have fairly drawn maps approved by elected officials who are accountable to the voters, we will win.”