Mississippi Republican Party responds to Hosemann's motion to dismiss, asks court to consider elections under old districts

As noted here before, Mississippi Republicans have a strategic goal in the redistricting fight: run twice, with the first election this fall being under the old district lines. If there was ever any doubt that was true, the Mississippi Republican Party removed it with their filing today in NAACP v. Barbour, et al. In their response to Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann's Motion to Dismiss, the MSGOP specifically requests that the court consider running under the current unconstitutionally malapportioned districts:

Secretary Hosemann’s suggestion that this Court should permit elections to beheld in 2011 under the present plan, just as this Court did in Watkins v. Mabus, 771 F.Supp 789 (S.D. Miss. 1991), should be given full and careful consideration by this Court when it reaches the remedial stage of this litigation

.As for the merits of the motion to dismiss itself, the MSGOP said it had already agreed that the court had jurisdiction. (That means they've already conceded the ripeness question upon which Hosemann's motion was based.)