Did you know the GOP now controls 66 of 99 state legislative houses?

American Thinker ^ | 11/6/2014 | Rick Moran

[SeekAndFind]

Another underreported fact from Tuesday's election is the extraordinary night Republicans had in winning state legislative seats.

The GOP now controls two thirds of state legislative houses – 66 of 99 (Nebraska's legislature is unicameral).  They upped the number of states where they control both house and senate to 24 – one more than they had before the election.  And according to this article in Vox, they cut the number of Democratic-held legislatures from 14 to 7.

Republicans made historic gains in state legislatures in 2010. They held on in many states in 2012, or made up for losses in one state with gains in another — even though Democrats won the national election. And they won even more in 2014. This isn't an accident — it's the result of strategic fundraising from national Republicans, beginning in 2010, aimed at engineering statehouse takeovers. Out-of-state contributions were shuffled to states where they would make a difference, particularly as congressional partisanship and gridlock made policymaking in Washington increasingly unlikely.

And at a time of national gridlock, state legislatures have done an immense amount of, well, legislating. Since 2010, 30 states, most controlled by Republicans, have passed a total of 205 new abortion restrictions. That's more restrictions than were passed in the entire first decade of the 2000s, according to the Guttmacher Institute:

wenty-two states, 18 with Republican majorities, have passed laws making it more difficult for people to vote.

After the Newtown shootings, most new state laws surrounding guns actually eased restrictions on owning and carrying firearms. Seventy new laws loosening gun control were passed, 49 in states with Republican legislative majorities and Republican governors, compared to three in Democratically controlled states.

[taxcontrol]

A thought exercise for the Tax amendment:

Consider representative apportionment of taxes. By that, I mean congress to decide how much to raise in taxes. After that, the amount to be raised gets apportioned between the members of Congress (1/2 to Senate, 1/2 to House). The states then receive a tax bill for their representation (sum of their Senator’s bill and their Representatives).

This allows the states to raise taxes to pay their bill as best and most appropriate to that state.

[Joe Boucher]

What happened to that oft repeated story that obammy and the dems were going to bury the pubbie party forever?
Make em the minority party for a hundred years.

[Jacquerie]

Yes, as expected, the statists disagree with the plain wording of the constitution. In that event, I hope the states hold a convention anyway and submit the amendments all around. Let Rome-on-the-Potomac split hairs and deny the ratification by three fourths of the states.

But, if the states do not take up the lifeline bequeathed to them by the Framers, I suppose long after I'm gone some muslim historian (the only ones allowed) will surreptitiously write “Rise and Fall of the American Republic,” and quietly weep.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks OWS.

[OneWingedShark]

You’re quite welcome.