Kobayashi Maru

"We're not rigging the election, we're
simply compensating for voter hatred."

-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor

No really, I want to know, how do these people sleep at night? Last November, the Republicans didn't do so well. Why? Well, a number of reasons. They compared a lot of things to rape that aren't rape, they called a lot of us lazy mooches, and their Presidential strategy hinged on reminding us that Obama isn't white. So what's Plan B? Drop the anti-intellectualism, homophobia and divisive culture-war bullshit, put on their big-boy pants and offer rational solutions to problems? Nope. Plan B is to change the goddamn rules.

If you have to click on this,
it's a -2 to your nerd roll.

Yeah, that's right, the GOP is going to try and Kobayashi Maru the next election. What the hell am I talking about? I'm glad I pretended you asked. The Kobayashi Maru is a test you have to take in order to graduate Starfleet academy. It puts cadets into a no-win scenario to see how they cope. The set up is simple, there's a freighter stranded in the Neutral Zone and you can A: play it safe and let the passengers die or B: enter the zone and try to rescue them knowing that the Klingons will kill the shit out of you and your crew. What do you do?

If you're James T. Kirk, you reprogram the simulator so it's possible to rescue the ship. Yes, it's cheating but you're James Testicles Kirk and the rules don't apply to you because you're the star of the damn movie.

"Cheating made me the man I am today...well, cheating, nepotism
and a magic destiny. Also I had lots of space sex, that helped."

-Captain James T. Kirk

Tough shit kid. 

What the hell does this have to do with elections? The last election showed the GOP that they suck and nobody likes them. A deadly combination if you're trying to get people to vote for you. You might even call it a no-win scenario. The GOP's solution is to try and change the way electoral votes are handed out. If I'm understanding this, States get two more electoral votes than they have congressional districts, think of them as bonus points. In some states these go to the winner of the popular vote. The Republican proposals would change this so that whoever wins the most districts gets these bonus votes as well.

Above in red: Real America. You might
remember it as the featureless expanse
seen from the airplane window.

Ah-hah, but if they're already winning these districts, shouldn't that count for something? Yes. And it does, this proposal would just give them the added advantage of two additional electoral votes in each state that implements it. According to the article, this would have swung the election for Romney. If you look at an electoral map that's divided up by Congressional District, it's mostly red. Romney lost because a lot of these districts are sparsely populated.

The idea behind Plan B is to 'level' the playing field so that it's possible to win the next election without, you know, persuading anyone. Look, I love me some Captain Kirk as much as the next guy, and when you're going up against a revenge crazed Ricardo Mantalban you've got to do what you've got to do but this is just election rigging. Mitt Romney didn't lose the 2012 election because the rules were unfair, he lost because he didn't have any good ideas and kind of acted like a dick.

"Good Evening my fellow Americans, I'd like to thank the exploitable
vagaries of the electoral college that made this day possible."

-Alternate Universe President Mitt Romney