D. Ralston: And take this, “[The Dem. Party of Ga.] put up the sign a long time ago that people like that weren’t welcome unless they were liberal.”

Jim Galloway, John Perry, Aaron Gould Sheinin and Kristina Torres pen a keeper in the AJC:

The state’s new congressional map would bring to completion a 20-year project born of an alliance struck by the likes of Cynthia McKinney and other African-American political leaders. When Democrat Zell Miller was governor, they began working with Republicans to boost both factions by making white congressional districts in Georgia whiter, and black districts blacker.

Of Georgia’s 14 new congressional districts, 10 Republican-leaning districts would be majority white, and four Democratic-leaning districts would be majority African-American.

Like the proposed new congressional map, new state House and Senate maps signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal last week take aim at white Democratic incumbents — with the same ruthlessness that Democrats once applied to the GOP. Taken as a whole, Democrats say Republicans are leveling a final blow at the biracial Democratic coalition that led Georgia out of the civil rights era.

“I think the Democratic Party of Georgia — if it feels like it’s losing moderates and moderate conservatives — they need to look in the mirror,” House Speaker David Ralston said. “They’ve put up the sign a long time ago that people like that weren’t welcome unless they were liberal.”