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"Take no prisoners!"

Believe me, when it comes to redistricting, I take no prisoners. I still can't believe that cowardly Bob Taft was afraid of Brown and Strickland running against him and gave them safe districts. I could have drawn a map with 14 districts where Bush got at least 54% of the vote in 2000 and only 4 (heavily) Democratic districts (one that combined Toledo with Lorain and Elyria, a second that combined Youngstown and Warren with most of Akron, a third that would preserve a black-majority district in Cleveland and a fourth that combined west Cleveland with parts of Akron). But if there aren't enough Republicans to go around, it would be foolish to draw an additional "Republican" district. For example, if one tried to decrease the number of Ohio Democrat districts to just 3 in the entire state by drawing three 47% Republican districts in NE Ohio instead of two 54% Republican districts and one 33% Republican district, we could well lose in all three districts instead of winning in 2 and losing in 1. The same holds true in Colorado. I think Bush got 54% of the vote in McInnis's district, and if one were to send Democrats from Udall to McInnis, it might turn it into a 50% district. While McInnis should be able to win, what would happen when McInnis steps down? And I don't have to tell you what would happen if we put Udall RATs into Beauprez's district. Democrats in Colorado are concentrated in Denver, Boulder, a few skiing counties west of Boulder, Pueblo and a few Hispanic counties south of Pueblo. While we can use stacking and cracking to keep the Democrats from winning in the Pueblo area, the heavy RAT concentration around Denver, Boulder and the liberal ski counties makes it necessary to use packing to concentrate them into two districts. Bush received 51% of the vote in Colorado in 2000 (BTW, the 2000 election is an excellent proxy for partisan voting trends, since Bush and Gore were both viewed as being smack in the middle of their party---another good proxy is adding up the Dole and Perot vote in 1996 and comparing it to the Clinton vote), so the GOP being unbeatable in 5 out of 7 congressional districts (71.4%) is a very good result. Just like we need to store a few acorns for winter, we need to keep our incumbents relatively safe in order to withstand a bad political year. Let the Democrats spread themselves too thin through redistricting---it bit them in the a$$ in GA in both the 90s and the 00s---we can continue to have House majorities for years to come by choosing our battles and thinking long-term.