Okay, GOP, rise and shine and don't forget your booties 'cuz it's cold out there!
That's was MSNBC anchor Ari Melber's message Friday evening after this week's crushing electoral defeats for Republicans across the country, who he compared to a famous comedy movie about a flawed man who lives the same day over and over again.
"Republicans in the political class and candidates in those gerrymandered super-red districts just keep kind of reliving their failures in a surrealtime loop," Melber said. "It's sort of like Kevin McCarthy meeting Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day.'"
Melber specifically pointed gerrymandering tactics as at least one root of the problem.
"Gerrymandering has made many House Republicans more worried about losing primaries to the hard right in the red seats that they made super-red artificially," Melber said, "rather than having to compete for the broader electorate in a red state, let alone a national coalition, which you just saw they have a hard time winning anymore."
According to Melber, it's a lot like Bill Murray's character getting repeatedly slapped by his love interest Rita.
"How many times can you get yourself slapped in the face on the same day?" asked Melber. "That kind of loop will either drive you sort of insane, or drive you to take action to change your reality so you don't keep reliving it. I think that is the wider context after this week's elections. The Republican Party may feel partly stuck in reliving this same approach to another election, even as the voters and its own leaders start to now publicly admit some of the obvious."
"So do we all have to relive Groundhog Day like a Bill Murray House speaker race?" added Melber. "Do we all have to get slapped over and over again? Would we be better off as a democracy where we all decide things together with two healthy competitive parties that aren't just driving themselves into the same gerrymandered districts?"
Watch the video below or at the link here.
Ari Melber compares GOP's plight to Groundhog Daywww.youtube.com
