I think this is a really interesting map. The red dots locate the home districts of the 80 Republican US House members who signed a letter to their leader, John Boehner, demanding that the prospect of a government shutdown be used as leverage to defund the Affordable Care Act. The red and blue shaded background indicates the result of the 2012 presidential election by congressional district, blue for Obama, red for Romney.
First, it's evident that Democrats live in cities. By acreage, Washington and Oregon do not look like the blue states that they are. The desert areas in the east are overwhelmingly Republican; the seacoasts, including especially the urban centers of Seattle and Portland, are overwhelming Democratic. Look at Ohio. Obama won that state. Look at Michigan. Obama won it, handily. Colorado was Obama's, too. Big cities are necessarily in small (by area) congressional districts. That's where the Obama vote resides.
The 80 fellows rooting for a shutdown don't live in Starbucks land. They're from the country, or the exurbs, and they're not worried about losing to a Democrat. As Ryan Lizza explains, Obama lost by an average of 23 points in these districts, and the representatives who signed the letter to Boehner won by an average of 34 points.
I agrued here that Republicans can hardly help but tarnish their brand in the big country we all share. That's because what's in the interest of the national party is not in the interest of individual Republican office-holders. What the Republican party ought to do is moderate, move toward the center, drop the fanaticism, wipe off the sneers and try to smile. But that wouldn't play in the districts represented by the fellows who might very well steer us off the cliff.
The Republican majority in the House is based on a minority of votes--in 2012, Democratic candidates for the US House received more votes, but Republicans won more elections. And eighty is barely more than a third of the 232 House Republican members. The letter that seems to have cowed Boehner concluded by quoting from Federalist Paper No. 58. There's something wrong when we all have to be in a car with a minority of a minority driving fast and reckless while lecturing about James Madison.
