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As the Republicans again pursue a path of destruction targeted
at Obamacare it’s worth noting that the most die-hard congressional opponents
of the Affordable Care Act represent districts that are very different than
most of America.
The 80 House Republicans who in a letter pressured
Speaker John Boehner to push for the government shutdown unless the ACA was
defunded do not live in those areas with growing diversity that worry GOP
strategists.
rural party, many House members from some of the sparsest areas of the nation
did not join the most ardent defund-Obamacare advocates. In fact, nearly half
were all from the traditional South (below the Mason-Dixon Live) or Texas. (The
map above compares the 80 districts with the 2012 presidential election
results, by congressional district.)
Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, relying upon data from The
Cook Report, completed an analysis of the 80 co-signatories’ districts and found
that they are, for the most part, outliers to the rest of America. It already
seems like a long time ago but the letter to Boehner came in late September at
a time when some establishment Republicans were predicting disaster for the GOP
if the shutdown occurred. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer dubbed
them the “suicide caucus.”
lawmakers come from districts that are, on average, 75 percent white, while the
average House district is 63 percent white, according to Lizza. In fact, the
demographics show that these districts (no doubt, with the help of
gerrymandering) are becoming more white. These territories have fewer Hispanics
and blacks than the average congressional district and slightly lower levels of
education.
The members
themselves of this little group of 80 are the furthest thing from diverse. Seventy-six
are male; 79 are white.
landscape this way:
“… Suicide
caucus members live in places where the national election results seem like an
anomaly. Obama defeated Romney by four points nationally. But in the 80 suicide
caucus districts, Obama lost to Romney by an average of 23 points. The
Republican (caucus) members themselves did even better. In these 80 districts,
the average margin of victory for the (House) Republican candidate was 34
points.
“In short,
these 80 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.”
