Tom DeLay’s plans to ram his redistricting plan through the Texas state senate just took what the Austin American-Statesman is calling a “direct, potentially fatal hit.” 
This is big news. And it comes because of the defection of a Republican state senator: State Senator Bill Ratliff.
It turns out that some Republicans in rural areas aren’t willing to have their representation bollixed up just so Tom DeLay can pad his majority and stick an electoral shiv in the back of Marty Frost.
“One or two (senators) are coming back shaking their heads, saying even some of the conservative parts of West Texas are asking why are we doing this,” Ratliff said a few days ago. “It’s totally unacceptable. The people in Bowie County would wind up being represented by someone in Garland, and that’s just one reason. It just obliterates the representation for my constituents in Congress.”
Today, according to the Austin American Statesmen, he said he would “not be a part of the destruction of [Texas’s tradition of bipartisanship] for the sake of a theoretical marginal partisan gain in the Texas congressional delegation.”
I think you could say this guy just made an enemy of Tom DeLay.
