How many 'rotten boroughs' are in this election? Quite a few, apparently.
Rotten borough: An 18th-century British expression, it refers to an election area with an imbalance between its population and its degree of representation.
In British parlance, 鈥渞otten boroughs鈥� were those that had lost most if not all of their residents, yet still had the right of representation in the House of Commons. Merriam-Webster found the earliest use dating back to a 1761 pamphlet inveighing against 鈥渟uch corrupting and bribing in poor rotten Borough Towns.鈥澛�
The dictionary鈥檚 鈥淭rend Watch鈥� that online searches for 鈥渞otten borough鈥� shot up after the phrase appeared in two separate U.S. politics articles. Conrad Black of the conservative National Review to dismissively describe former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton鈥檚 career as a senator: 鈥淪he won two elections in what was a large rotten borough in New York, having been the Wronged Lady of America.鈥�
Meanwhile, in New York magazine, Ed Kilgore to discuss Donald Trump鈥檚 campaign. 鈥淭he estimated 58 percent of delegates he needs to win the nomination remains feasible if he wins big in the Northeast and remains sufficiently competitive in California to win some rotten-borough congressional districts mainly populated by minority folk who are feared and resented by their few Republican neighbors,鈥� he wrote.
Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman also the term last month to describe how GOP-driven redistricting has made it likely that the party will retain control of the House. 鈥淲hile Donald Trump could win the White House 鈥� or lose so badly that even our rotten-borough system of congressional districts, which heavily favors the GOP, delivers the House to the Democrats 鈥� the odds are that come January, Hillary Clinton will be president,鈥� Krugman wrote.
With July鈥檚 Republican National Convention increasingly looking like it will be contentious, the Daily Beast former President Theodore Roosevelt鈥檚 use of the phrase in a letter describing another monumentally testy GOP gathering 鈥� the 1912 convention in Chicago in which he battled incumbent President William Howard Taft. Though Roosevelt had endorsed Taft, the latter鈥檚 drift to the right angered him, inspiring him to wage an unsuccessful challenge. Roosevelt eventually ran as part of the Progressive or 鈥淏ull Moose鈥� Party, with both he and Taft losing to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
鈥淚n the Convention at Chicago last June,鈥� an angry Roosevelt wrote later, 鈥渢he breakup of the Republican Party was forced by those rotten-borough delegates from the South 鈥� representing nothing but their own greed for money or office鈥� who had 鈥渂etrayed the will of the mass of the plain people of the party.鈥�
Chuck McCutcheon writes his 鈥淪peaking Politics鈥� blog exclusively for Politics Voices.
Interested in decoding what candidates are saying? Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark鈥檚 latest book, 鈥淒oubletalk: The Language, Code, and Jargon of a Presidential Election,鈥� is
