SCOTUS NON-SURPRISE

My intellectual support for the SCOTUS decision rendered this morning stems from the idea of using past data and behavior in a pre-emptive manner for current conditions. That is, past violations of  civil rights automatically must mandate restrictions in the present for certain states. There is, however, a SCOTUS precedent for past deficiencies carrying over to present circumstances: Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes - "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

I currently live in a state that, even today in the face of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which SCOTUS did not declare unconstitutional in its entirety or even in key sections), strives to impede full access to voting by minorities. My sense, keeping in mind the long arc of justice, is that TX Republicans will not be successful in this endeavor for many more years because the TX Democratic Party will succeed  inmobilizing Hispanic voters. Once accomplished, the TX Republican Party, as presently constituted, will become pragmatically irrelevant in effect even if not intellectually in principle.

The prospect of pragmatic irrelevance makes the current TX Republican Party want a dip of snuff and a bite of raw lemon shoved up its nether regions: The TX Republicans have seen the future and it scares them to death.

Further, how goes TX will in large part determine how the national electoral process goes. At least for the present, two large states - New York and California - appear solidly Democratic and have an outsized effect upon the outcomes of national elections. When TX becomes Democratic, the national Republican Party will be toast, absent major changes in philosophy and operating procedures.

A basic problem in many (almost all states?) stems from the effect of gerrymandering to preserve current positions of elected power. Without gerrymandering, much of problems with implementation/revisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 would be moot.

Am I for full voting rights by all citizens? Of course. The strategy and tactics to achieve and preserve that obligatory goal - for the survival of our democratic republic - bedevils us.

In essence, all that the SCOTUS decision has done is make it harder, but not impossible, to challenge voter discrimination through the courts. 

Do I expect Congress to act anytime soon to change the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in order to make all sections Constitutionally consistent? Well, we all know about expectations: Hold both hands in front of you, expect in one hand, expectorate in the other, and determine which hand has something in it.