For decades, Republican populists have been handicapped by the so-called “principled conservative” wing of the GOP. The Democratic success with Virginia’s redistricting teaches a lesson that the old hats can no longer ignore.
The writing was on the wall in late 2025 that Democrats would attempt to redraw their U.S. House district maps in places like Virginia and California to give the party an advantage over Republicans in the 2026 midterms. This kicked off a national effort by President Donald Trump and Republicans to do the same in GOP-controlled states like Indiana, which has a Republican trifecta.
However, Indiana, while being solidly red, is not controlled by populist Republicans, but rather members who closely align with the failed version of the Republican party, which was once led by elected officials like former Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and former Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. These members have become a living meme, clutching their proverbial pearls and screaming about their so-called principles anytime populists want to use the power they were granted by the people to govern. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)
Indiana has nine House districts. Trump and the national Republican party wanted Indiana to redistrict the state from a 7-2 Republican advantage to a 9-0 GOP sweep. Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun called a special session for congressional redistricting, and the effort passed the state House 57-41, despite a handful of GOP no-votes joining Democrats. However, the new map failed to pass the state Senate.
Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray represented the GOP mutiny on behalf of the “principled” Republicans against the populist Republicans’ plan for redistricting. He claimed that he did “not feel that redrawing our [Indiana’s] Congressional districts mid-cycle is the best way to achieve that goal,” adding that Republicans should focus on flipping districts like the existing 1st Congressional District, which has been trending red.
#BREAKING: Senate President Tem Rodric Bray says there aren’t enough votes to pursue mid-cycle redrawing of Indiana’s congressional maps and that the Senate will not reconvene in December. pic.twitter.com/lNNgS2wJQh
— The Redistrict Network (@RedistrictNet) November 14, 2025
Fast forward to April 21. Republicans found themselves on the losing side of the Democrats’ scheme to cancel out 49 percent of their voters by changing the state map, shifting the 6-5 Democratic-to-Republican split to a 10-1 Democratic supermajority.
Here lies the lesson for Bray and Republicans like him. Either use the power the voters gave you to enact their will and mandate, or sit back like the impotent fool you are and watch Democrats erase any chance for you ever to govern again.
Arguably, what Virginia Democrats accomplished goes way beyond what Trump and the populist movement were asking of Bray. In 2024, Trump carried Indiana by almost 20 points over former Vice President Kamala Harris. The divide was 58-39 percent for Trump over Harris.
Virginia’s race was much closer. Harris only won Virginia by about 6 points. The House races were even closer. Democrats beat Republicans by less than 4 points (3.8) in the 2024 U.S. House popular vote. And yet, Democrats have no issue with redistricting the state because they understand how to use power.
Republican New York Rep. Claudia Tenney explained this perfectly in a post on X, where she fights back against claims that Republicans started Virginia’s redistricting fight. In fact, Democrats have been doing this for years in Democrat-controlled states, like New York.
“[Ari Fleischer] please stop saying Texas started this redistricting mess. New York started it. After an extreme gerrymander by NY Dems in 2022, completely ignoring the Independent Commission they created in 2014, the Court of Appeals in NY restored fairness,” Tenney said.
“Then, the Dems sued again in 2024 to overturn the Court of Appeals decision. They bullied 2 Court of Appeals judges off the bench and forced new Dem. favorable maps and the Reps lost 4 seats. In 2026 they AGAIN sued to gerrymander and eliminate the Rep seat in Staten Island and were looking for even more power. The US Supreme Court stopped the nonsense for now. The Dems plan to gerrymander again in 2028. They will stop at nothing and do not care about the people or fairness. This is a bloodsport. The Republicans need to wake up and recognize this fact,” she continued, adding that Republicans need to “do whatever it takes within the law to ensure that the citizens of this country win.”
.@AriFleischer please stop saying Texas started this redistricting mess. New York started it. After an extreme gerrymander by NY Dems in 2022, completely ignoring the Independent Commission they created in 2014, the Court of Appeals in NY restored fairness. Then, the Dems sued…
— Claudia Tenney (@claudiatenney) April 22, 2026
In a perfect world, everyone would play fairly. And to a degree, I sympathize with the GOP pearl-clutchers for their utopian world view. However, U.S. politics is not run by good and honorable people. Democrats seem to grasp this reality and use it to their advantage every time they get power.
And we’ve seen what happens to our country when Democrats are in control. The U.S. becomes a hitching post for the globalist regime. Americans are suffocated with high taxes and regulations that cause a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elites. The poor get poorer. Our children’s classrooms are stocked with LGBTQ insanity and anti-white racist ideologies. Our daughters get assaulted in bathrooms and locker rooms by male predators pretending to be women. Illegal immigrants flood our borders, committing heinous crimes against innocent Americans. Wages drop or stagnate, inflation rises, and housing affordability moves farther out of reach.
These are the gospels of the Democratic Party orthodoxy and the antithesis of what Republicans supposedly stand for. There can be no room for pretending that norms and principles play a role in a discussion where the other side has zero intent to play fair — unless the point of pearl-clutching over conservative values is really just a way for these Republicans to give their power over to the Democrats, while still putting on the GOP mask. (ROOKE: Americans Should Brace For Impact As Conservatives Losing Grip On Country’s Steering Wheel)
The lesson for the so-called “principled conservatives” is actually quite simple. They can either willingly fall in line with the populist movement and help save America from the modern-day Bolsheviks in the Democratic Party, or they can cling to their norms like a life raft as the greatest country ever formed sinks into the ocean. But they must understand that doing this won’t protect them from lining up on the wall with the rest of us. We will all face the same fate.
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