Oversized, winning margins were also recorded by many other Republicans in House districts where friendly-state legislatures maintained or strengthened favorable partisan boundaries after the 2010 census. The core of the Tea Party-backed House members won their 2012 elections with an average of 65 percent.
No Reward
Obama alluded to those uncompetitive wins yesterday, and how they make it more difficult to reach bipartisan agreements.
“I recognize that there are some House members, Republican House members,” from districts “where I got clobbered in the last election,” he said. “And, you know, they don’t get politically rewarded a lot for being seen as negotiating with me. And that makes it harder for divided government to come together.”
During an electronic town hall last week with “tens of thousands” of participants, Fleming said he couldn’t keep them on the topic of the shutdown. “All they wanted to do is talk about the problems and the failures of Obamacare,” he said.
‘Life Goes On’
“For most Americans, and certainly in my district, life goes on every day regardless of the so-called shutdown which we know is only 17 percent of the government that is actually shut down,” he said. “The vast majority of Americans are not directly affected. That doesn’t mean we should do it and I want to end it as soon as possible.”
Although a small national park is closed in Fleming’s district, civilian federal workers are scarce in this swath of northwest Louisiana. More than 755,600 people live in the district; in all of Louisiana, there are just slightly more than 21,000 non-military federal employees, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
“I don’t think it’s had an effect on me,” Sam Scott, a 66-year-old landscaper in Shreveport, said of the shutdown. “I don’t work for the government.”
A debt default or a prolonged shutdown could change the political landscape, said Mike Collier, who chairs the Republican Party in Bossier Parish, Louisiana.