How a minority party holds on to power.

[Tom Joad]

The Republicans have been able to hold on to more power in congress than their numbers would indicate. They do this by working the system. But inevitably the time is coming when even that won't be enough.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...usaolp00000592

The Gallup poll reports that the number of Americans identifying as Republicans has fallen to its lowest level in the quarter century it has been tracking the number: 25 percent.

Republicans lost the last presidential popular election by almost five million votes.

The FEC reports that combining the total number of votes cast by Americans for president, House and Senate in 2012, Americans voted for the GOP 158,605,000 times and for the Democrats 176,167,000 times. In other words they cast over 17 million more Democratic votes than Republican votes in 2012.

And even though Republican gerrymandering allowed the party to maintain control of the House by a slim margin, 1.17 million more votes were cast for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans.

Right now, GOP hopes for victories do not rest on their ability to appeal democratically to the majority of voters. They hinge entirely on successful gerrymandering and voter suppression policies that reduce the turnout of ordinary Americans. That means their hopes for political success in the future rest on very, very thin ice. And -- amazingly -- they seem to be doing everything they can to make the ice that separates them from complete political marginality thinner and thinner.

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