Myth Busters: IRC Edition
Governor Brewer created a firestorm last week when she demanded that the Independent Redistricting Commission explain its actions. Naturally, there was a lot of coverage this weekend and unfortunately, most of it was wrong.
I recognize that this is a complex issue so I'm not ready to say that the media is intentionally creating a false narrative. I think they have simply fallen for some mythology. So let's debunk the four main myths.
Myth 1: The Republicans are going to remove the commissioners because they don’t like the lines.
This myth is a Democratic Party talking point that is circulated by the media as a fact.
KJZZ’s Dennis Lambert reported on the letter today and offered up this reason for her actions. “The Governor, and many Republicans, claim the congressional lines drawn by the panel favor Democrats.”
Here’s how Mike Sunnucks put it on Horizon last Friday:
Violating the open meetings laws, picking a mapping firm that had ties to Obama and drawing lines that the Republicans don’t like. That’s their dereliction of duty.
Those two explanations are just Democratic Party talking points. To his credit, Horizon host Ted Simons tried to correct Mike Sunnucks, but didn’t quite get it right:
Not necessarily, what she’s basically saying and what Republicans are saying is that the commission is not doing what it’s mandated to do and that is to look at all sorts of things, not just competitiveness.
Actually, the basis for the suit is that the Constitution prohibits the IRC from gerrymandering the districts—yet that’s exactly what the IRC did. The Constitution requires the districts to be compact, respect communities of interest and respect natural boundaries. Once these requirements are met, the IRC can make the districts competitive. In this case, the IRC sacrificed those requirements in order to create competitive districts. NO ONE denies that the districts are gerrymandered. This is a clear violation of the Constitutional requirements.
Here's an appropriate way to frame the issue. "Republicans claim that the IRC violated its constitutional mandate by gerrymandering the map so that the resulting districts are not compact, and do not respect communities of interest or natural boundaries. Democrats for their part charge that the Republicans simply don't like the lines that the IRC has drawn.
(via Espresso Pundit)