A number of news outlets have reported on the possibility that Thomas Brunell, a Texas professor of politics, will be hired by Trump for “ … the top operational job at the U.S. Census Bureau …” This is not a job that requires Senate confirmation – it’s just an up and down hiring. Why is the man controversial? Because of a book he published: Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America.
It’s an alarming title. I’ve not read the book. I doubt I ever will. The title rather tells it all, although I might be willing to propose a name change: Picking Your Winners For You Ahead Of Time Because We All Know Who They Are. Which is a title that might outrage voters in the recent state-wide elections in Virginia. Or even those in Alabama who are planning to vote in the upcoming Senatorial special election. Or all those flipped state-level seats throughout the nation since the Presidential election and its horrid consequences.
So just in contemplating the title, I can see that this is an attempt by the extremist right, threatened by nation-wide demographics, to move the political fight from the popular vote arena to another arena, a state-level fight over the districts. Similarly, by putting this professor in a key position in the Census Burea, which provides the rendering of demographics into the political (and others) realm, could be an attempt to freeze the demographics, already beginning to slip away from the extremist right after the populace’s brief and dubious fling with right-wing extremism.
And what does that say about the GOP and its embrace with the right-wing extremists? Their ideas are neither popular nor particularly persuasive, I think. Their share of the population, according to Gallup, has fallen, while the Democrats may have bottomed out. Their response? Or, better yet, whoever is sitting at the apex and directing ideology? Freeze themselves into power.
So this appears to be another attempt to cement themselves into power. We can only hope it turns into another instance of trying to impose your will on Jell-O. It’ll all run away.
