Soccer Dad: We have two houses don't we?

November 2, 2006

We have two houses don't we?

Brian Mann complains that the Republican may, in the end, Win Small

Majorities in Congress aren�t formed by the national zeitgeist, as Mr. Rove cheerfully points out. They are built one race at a time. And in dozens of close contests this fall, the outcome will be determined largely by one often-overlooked minority group: the mostly white and mostly conservative voters who live in America�s small towns.
Residents of rural areas make up only a fifth of the country�s population. That�s a little less than African-Americans and Hispanics combined. But unlike voters in those minority groups, small-town whites are often kingmakers in national politics.

In 2004, they voted for George W. Bush by nearly a 20-point margin. Newspapers ran headlines that baffled their urban readers: �Rural Values Proved Pivotal,� �Conservatives in Rural Ohio Big Key in Bush Victory,� and �G.O.P. Won With Accent on Rural and Traditional.�

This year, those same right-leaning small towns make up a major voting bloc in a half-dozen make-or-break Senate races, like those in Missouri, Montana, Tennessee and Virginia. They also dominate battleground House districts throughout the country, from Idaho to northern New York. If rural America embraces Republicans with the same fervor it did two years ago, Democrats will almost certainly be denied a majority in the Senate and may fall short in the House.

Mann objects to this

In part, the electoral importance of small towns reflects a profound rural bias hardwired into our political system. The Constitution grants two Senate seats to each state regardless of its population. As a consequence, a majority of senators are elected by voters in 26 sparsely settled states that together contain less than 18 percent of the country�s population.

A few decades ago, this uneven distribution of power didn�t matter, because rural states regularly divided their votes between the two major parties. But in recent years, low-population states like Alaska, Kansas and Wyoming have voted as a conservative bloc, favoring Republican candidates by overwhelming margins.

Of course that's why nationally we have a bicameral legislature. One house, the Senate is based on states; the other Congress is based on population. Ideally, the House serves to ensure that no population is unrepresented; and the Senate ensures that no State is unrepresented. If the Democrats don't take back the House, it's not due to any "rural bias." They just didn't make their case effectively to enough of the population.

But let's consider the other side of things. Take the state of Maryland. In 1994 candidate Ellen Sauerbrey won 21 of 24 jurisdictions and lost the race for governor to Parris Glendening. Why should 3 jurisdictions dictate their view of governance to the other 21? Isn't that a sign of urban bias?

Currently Governor Bob Ehrlich is in a tight race to retain his office against Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore. Ehrlich has been endorsed by newspapers all over the state (including, surprisingly, the urban Washington Post), from the mountain areas to the west to the shore in the east. Clearly he is pursuing policies that benefit many different types of communities. And yet he may well lose to his opponent whose strength is mostly in urban areas.

If the prognosticators are correct, Mann needn't worry, as the Democrats will almost certainly take the House. But the point of his complaint is silly. The founding fathers sought to balance the interests of the populations versus the interests of the states. Having a bicameral legislature gives Congress the chance to check the outsize influence of the less populous states in the Senate.

UPDATE: Maryland Conservatarian who critiques op-eds in the Washington Post so I don't have to, now applies his skills to the NY times. I had only concerned myself with Mann's argument against the Constitution's implementation of America's governing bodies. But that didn't address the complete op-ed. Maryland Conservatarian addresses why Mann feels as he does. It's because Mann vehemently disagrees with the views of rural America and that those views are outside the mainstream. What's mainstream, Mayland Conservatarian's glad you asked.

Listening to the left and its public faces in Congress, you�d think that same-sex marriage was something all decent Americans agreed on; that Abortion on demand was a mainstream thought; that the second amendment was an anachronism the majority eagerly sought to mute; that true Christians could be only be liberals; that Bush and Cheney were the true terrorists and that unchecked immigration was a national blessing.

Technorati tags: Election 2006, Congress, Senate.