Are Republicans already giving up on their electoral college rigging scheme?

After getting their butts kicked by Democrats in 2012, Republicans huddled up to strategize how to win in the next presidential election.  Did they make any real effort to reflect on their own policy platform and rhetoric that turns off large swaths of the electorate? No, of course not.

Instead, they set up a scheme to steal the next election by rigging the electoral college in 6 states.  So far, 4 states look likely to reject these shenanigans, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan.  Two additional states, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are still debating the GOP’s plan.

Via Talking Points Memo:

Not only does the Virginia bill appear to be dead, the media frenzy surrounding it has forced top Republicans in other states to take a decisive position on similar proposals in their legislatures as well.

In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) came out decisively against the idea on Tuesday, a shift from previous statements suggesting he “could go either way” on the issue. 

[…]

The very same day in Ohio, spokesmen for Gov. John Kasich, state Senate president Keith Faber, and state House Speaker William Batchelder, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer they had no plansto pursue an electoral vote bill, with Batchelder actively opposing it. “Nobody in Ohio is advocating this,” Secretary of State John Husted added.

Florida doesn’t appear likely to pass a bill either, given that Republican House Speaker Will Weatherford is opposed to the plan as a panacea for GOP electoral prospects. “I don’t think we need to change the rules of the game, I think we need to get better,” he told the Miami Herald last week.

This is great news but it’s still somewhat frustrating that Republicans are always trying to rig the system against its citizens, instead of winning a free and fair election.  You would think that after decisive losses and an obvious demographic shift, the GOP would be motivated to change course because manipulating the election seems like a losing strategy even in the short term.