The GOP Becomes A Regional Party

Har, de har har! Just wow!

Of course, you fools! The GOP does not care about the Northeast!

And these were GOP voters too!:

Republicans are, perhaps more than they realize, stiffing their own voters. The fact is, the parts of New York and New Jersey hit hardest by Sandy tended to be far more Republican-leaning than the states as a whole. Obama won New Jersey by nearly 18 percentage points, but he lost the two big coastal counties, Ocean and Monmouth, with only 41 and 47 percent of the vote, respectively. He won New York City with a whopping 81 percent of the vote. But among the few pockets of the city that Mitt Romney carried were the precincts hit hardest by Sandy, including southern Staten Island and Belle Harbor in the Rockaways.

What are we to make of this? Well, for one thing, that as our political landscape becomes more starkly sorted between red and blue, it is important to keep in mind that the clustering often happens at a more local level than we realize—there are very red islands in blue seas, and vice versa. Also, that gerrymandering can come at a real cost to citizens in need of serious help. The more that seats are carved into reliably Republican or Democratic enclaves and the less that members need to worry about winning reelection, the less incentive there is for party leaders to keep them in fine fettle with their constituents, whether through routine earmarks or through emergency aid after a disaster.

Maybe some quick relief:

Following a meeting with House leadership and Northeastern lawmakers on Wednesday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) said that the House will vote on $9 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief on Friday and again for $51 billion in aid on Jan. 15.

King added that he will support House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) once up for re-election in the new Congress.

Still, the national GOP is toast. This GOP decay is occurring the same way nationally as it did in California twenty and thirty years. It's hard to believe California was once nearly the most reliable GOP state in the entire country. Now, it's unlikely voters will ever vote in another Republican to statewide office again as long as I live.

As goes California, so, in time, goes the nation.

Once again, The Man Who Is Wrong About Everything (aka Charles Krauthammer) blames Obama: