Trump understands that extreme gerrymandering in defense of conservatism is no vice

By Gary Abernathy

Illustration created with Google Gemini

In reality, Trump’s so-called ‘revenge’ installs Republicans who are willing to effectively fight the Socialist Left

Following the Indiana primary results, where Republican challengers backed by President Trump largely knocked off incumbent state legislative Republicans who had refused to get behind Trump’s redistricting effort, most FLFM (far-left, formerly mainstream) media outlets characterized the results as “revenge” by Trump.

One opinion piece in USA Today portrayed the stand against redistricting taken by Indiana GOP lawmakers as a case of state senators admirably putting “the Constitution ahead of Trump’s partisan demands.”

“…[t]he message delivered to GOP members of Congress, as well as to Republican lawmakers in other states, is that defying even Trump’s most outrageous demands is still the path to defeat within their own party,” according to the author, examining election results.

To be sure, when Trump began calling for GOP-led states to redraw their legislative maps in the middle of a decade — rather than enacting them at the beginning of a new one as has long been traditional — it seemed, at first, outrageous. But Trump has often been a strategic thinker ahead of his time, and a master of staying in front of the even more outrageous goals and priorities of the Democratic Party and their FLFM media allies.

Many of us have long viewed the right to draw favorable districts as part of the spoils of victory for both parties when they’re in control of their respective states. The outcry against “gerrymandering” always comes from the party not in a position to gerrymander.

The U.S. Constitution mandates that a census be taken every 10 years to establish how many House seats are allocated per state. Drawing maps has historically been connected to that once-a-decade cycle, but that’s tradition, not a constitutional mandate — states can actually decide how often maps are drawn.

Trump’s encouragement of Texas and then other GOP-led states to redraw their maps now instead of later was a smart political move — soon countered by Democrats with their own redrawn maps. Courts have decided that some have done so legally, others have not.

A step ahead of most Republicans – whose conservative nature tends to make them conformists – Trump long ago recognized the extremism increasingly employed by those on the Left, and the necessity of matching their radicalism to counter their ascendance.

Today’s Left is not, as they say, your grandfather’s Left. It is not traditional leftwing progressivism. It is a growing Marxist/Socialist movement with anarchist tendencies that must be defeated if we have any hope of preserving capitalism, law and order, and our constitutional republic for future generations.

The Left’s lax attitude toward immigration laws — supporting open borders and resisting the deportation of illegal immigrants — reinforces the suspicion that they are encouraging the mass importation of millions of someday-voters who will support their candidates, as also demonstrated by their opposition to voter I.D. laws and voter roll purges, along with their aggressive use of ballot harvesting programs.

Today’s New Left embraces anarchy

Want to talk about outrageousness? As of this writing, some Virginia Democrats – who had gerrymandered a map from a 6-5 to a 10-1 Democrat advantage – were seriously considering passing a law requiring the retirement of all members of the state Supreme Court and replacing them with lackeys who would vote to sustain the results of the recent election codifying the new map – an election the current state court deemed had violated Virginia law.

The election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the success of radical socialists like Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (seriously discussed as a presidential contender in some circles), Rashida Tlaib, et. al., and a growing number of other true-believing socialists winning races across the country has signaled a dangerous embrace of Marxism – can we dispense with the “democratic socialism” nonsense? – that, if the trend continues, will transition the country from capitalism to socialism to communism and ultimately turn the U.S. into another third world country.

We are no longer living in a world where the polite and traditional political tactics of the past are effective in beating back the radical-Left socialist tide, especially when the media aligns in support of it. As stated before in this space, the FLFM media, not the Democratic Party, is actually the political force most effectively standing in opposition to the GOP and conservatism in general. The Democratic Party is merely the legal vehicle utilized to promote candidates and conduct fundraising.

The Left wants to fundamentally change the United States forever. It portrays evangelical Christianity and other mainstream conservative religious beliefs as bigoted, promotes outrageous behavior and “lifestyles” as normal, campaigns for universal healthcare models that by their nature result in mediocre treatment and fewer innovations, and demonizes financial success while openly advocating for the kind of socialist “share the wealth” structure that historically destroys the standard of living everywhere it’s been tried.

Even more troubling, many on today’s Left are increasingly justifying violence and anarchy to achieve their means, including vilifying and aggressively resisting law enforcement (attacking ICE), glorifying accused assassins (the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s alleged murderer), and even dismissing attempts on the president’s life as overblown or even fake (as many as 40 percent of Democrats).

That’s the America being crafted brick by brick by the Radical Left, through a philosophy once couched in language designed to make it more palatable, but now openly detailed in plain and simple terms. The message is targeted to a swath of the population sufficiently ignorant of the lessons of history, thanks in part to institutions of so-called “higher learning” that for decades have vilified capitalism and traditional American values.

Traditional politics no longer effective

Traditionalism/conservatism cannot successfully be maintained, and the growing socialist movement kept at bay, through the methods of the past, such as recruiting and backing good candidates, raising sufficient campaign funds, developing a winning message and aggressively campaigning at the grassroots levels. These traditional tactics are increasingly ineffective in a bubbled country.

It is sad but true that about 85 percent of congressional districts are considered “safe,” roughly evenly divided between the parties. Such an alignment makes control of the House by either party extremely narrow – and nearly impossible to effectively govern. Trump recognizes as much.

In fact, many politicians have long understood the importance of map drawing, and both parties have gerrymandered states to their advantage. But unlike Democrats – who are more merciless in their tactics – many Republicans have tried to stay somewhere within the ballpark of rules and tradition. That’s the position held by Republicans at the state level who balked at Trump’s demand to redraw congressional maps in the middle of a decade.

Some would call that attitude admirable. Others (like me) would respond, “How cute.” In reality, the notion that the old standards of political behavior still apply is the height of naivete. Trump’s effort to replace state legislative Republicans who refused to redistrict their states might be partly “revenge,” but the practical result will be to install Republicans who better understand what’s at stake and the modern tactics necessary to defeat today’s more-dangerous-than-ever Radical Left.

The late Arizona senator and 1964 GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, accused of being a radical, famously declared at that year’s Republican convention, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Those words ring truer today for conservatives than they did 60-plus years ago. Leftwing extremism – normalized by a FLFM news and entertainment media widely populated by true-believing liberals and socialists – can only be effectively countered by conservative political strategies that are unorthodox, creative and often unprecedented.

The fight can no longer be won by traditional means. Conservative radicalism – not violent radicalism, but strategically innovative and sometimes even outrageous actions within the law and the Constitution — must be the path today’s Right aggressively pursues. The immediate redrawing of legislative districts is a perfect example of such thinking.

For conservatives, there is an intrinsic contradiction at work. To preserve the conservative movement and protect American traditionalism, the Right must break free of its inherent reluctance to abandon norms. But it cannot be stressed enough – Radical Conservatism is the only approach that will save our country from Radical Leftism.

Winning the gerrymander war is Step One. Many similar steps must follow to forge a new path to victory. Republicans who oppose the new methods necessary to win are voluntarily raising the white flag of surrender, and saying goodbye to the United States as we have known it.

Gary Abernathy is an award-winning journalist and columnist with a long career in news media and politics, including as a contributing columnist for the Washington Post and a frequent analyst on PBS NewsHour. He is the author of “MAGA Republican Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions.” Never miss an update from Abernathy Road, where Gary offers opinion and analysis about political and cultural developments.