Thought Republicans felt giddy enough about their comfortable House majority to quit defying tradition with their mid-decade reapportionments? Fat chance, says the Savannah Morning News [registration required, emphasis added]:

Time to redraw congressional districts?

State Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson seems to be warming to the idea.

With Republicans now controlling both houses of the state legislature and the governorship, there's been talk of another look at the high-stakes congressional redistricting issue.

If it happens, the effects could be felt in the 12th Congressional District, which takes in most of Savannah.

... Meeting with reporters last week, Johnson seemed ... eager to remap some congressional districts.

He mentioned the 12th District, designed by Democrats in the legislature to be represented by one of their own, as especially deserving of boundary changes.

"It ought to be done," he said, but added that there is an internal debate among Republican legislators over whether to do so.

Johnson cited the sprawling, unwieldy and sometimes-confusing configuration of the 12th.

What he didn't mention is that any consolidation would likely mean fewer Democrats there. More important, it would improve the odds that a Republican could unseat newly elected Democrat John Barrow in 2006.

The risk is more than theoretical; following a GOP-dominated redistricting in Texas, four incumbent Democrats lost there Nov. 2.

Any major changes in the 12th also would mean shifting Democratic voters to the 1st Congressional District, represented by Savannah Republican Jack Kingston.

The 1st now is so lopsidedly Republican that no Democrat even bothered to run against Kingston this year.

Although that might change under redistricting, few doubt that Kingston, first elected in 1992, would remain a shoo-in.

Ahhhh, how predictable. If making gains in Congress meant breaking the rules in Texas, then hey — why not add more seats by trying the strategy nationwide?

Thing is, by all appearances this makes Tom DeLay — who engineered the Texas redistricting — not just a ranking Republican leader, but an out-and-out role model to Republicans in other states. I don't know if they intend to send the message that the party's sense of propriety has ended up as tattered as DeLay's sense of shame, but regardless, that's the message I hear loud and clear.