US Supreme Court Issues Stay In NC ‘Partisan Gerrymandering’ Ruling

RALEIGH – The United States Supreme Court has issued has temporarily stayed an order requiring North Carolina to redraw congressional districts in a partisan gerrymandering case.

The federal appeals court that issued the ‘partisan gerrymandering’ ruling also asked the defendants to produce new maps by January 24, and file them with the court by January 29. If that doesn’t sound to you like enough time to redraw congressional districts, especially in front of primary filing deadlines next month, you’re in good company, as Chief Justice John Roberts apparently didn’t think so either.

The stay means 2018 congressional elections will take place based on the current maps, while the case is on the dockett to be considered by the nation’s highest court.

The Supreme Court has overturned electoral maps because of racial gerrymandering, but it has never struck down a map because of partisan gerrymandering. The federal court that struck down the North Carolina congressional map because it was unconstitutionally partisan was the first to issue such an absurd ruling.

Democrats are predictably apoplectic, crying into their pillows that the courts can’t come to their rescue by issuing their own partisan opinions.

Luckily, the responsibility of considering the temporary stay fell to Roberts, instead of Liberal justices like Sotomayor or Ginsburg, who reportedly would have gone the other way.

Anyone with eyeballs can see, in a side-by-side comparison, that the Republican-drawn maps are less gerrymandered, and more compact and contiguous, then previous maps drawn by Democrats. That’s why the Leftist media chose to pictures of Democrat-drawn maps from the 90s to mislead readers and viewers into thinking Republicans were responsible for monstrosities like the ‘Snake District’ that winds its way through the Triad.

Democrats have consistently crowed that the Republican maps give the latter so much of an advantage as to virtually guarantee future majorities. ‘Voters should pick their lawmakers, not the other way around’ is a common refrain regurgitated by the Left in the Old North State.

The only problem with that logic is, of course, won their state legislative majorities under gerrymandered maps drawn by Democrats. Recent election results in Wisconsin, where a similar ‘partisan gerrymandering’ case is being considered also negate that argument.

Jim Blaine, Chief of Staff for N.C. Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger (R-Rockingham), pointed this out brilliantly in a Twitter rant on Friday.

You won’t hear this from any of liberal #ncpol media but the liberals’ bogus crusade against “partisan” gerrymandering took a huge blow in an odd way in Wisconsin this week. Democrats won a “gerrymandered” State Senate seat Republicans had held since the 2000 election. 1/

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

The win devastates Democrats’ legal arguments b/c the animating theory they’ve put forward in WI, PA, #ncpol and other places is GOP redistricting plans make it impossible for Dems to win by infringing on the free speech and free association rights of voters who might vote Dem 2/

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

Set aside the arrogance of this argument as it relates to the intelligence of voters and their ability to make informed decisions b/w candidates. And set aside the fact Democrats in many of these states had coasted to re-election in districts they drew before losing in 2010 3/

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

And set aside the fact the Dem party is now a narrow coalition of unionists, socialists and other far-left outfits like newspaper editorialists who ostracize any voices of moderation in their party while advocating a radical remake of America into a European style social state 4/

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

Set all that aside. Democrats just won a district they said was “gerrymandered” so they could not win. This win shows the dishonesty of their court arguments while exposing the goal of their legal cases: 5/

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

Obama appointed judges taking over district drawing and putting court ordered gerrymanders in place across the country that will elect a congress that will force the Obama/Media/Far-left Socialist agenda on an America that doesn’t want it. The irony of all this… /7

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

is a Dem Party that had even a modicum of tolerance for moderates would this very day hold the WH, Congress and, most likely, would never have lost #NCGA. But that isn’t what today’s Dem Party wants. And unable to get what they want at the ballot box they’ve turned to the courts.

— Jim Blaine (@JimBlaine) January 19, 2018

How are Democrats going to argue with that? They can’t. Instead, they will obfuscate, cry racism, and go back to the courts again and again to achieve results they could never achieve at the ballot box.

Partisan advantage in redistricting is a mandate given legislative majorities by the voters that put them there in the first place. They are not ironclad, as Blaine points out is the case in Wisconsin, along with North Carolina Republicans overcoming of decades of gerrymandering to win majorities.

No word on when the Supreme Court will actually hear the case just yet, but fingers crossed that they have a better knowledge of the constitution and balance of powers than the activist judges in the Fourth Circuit.