An event such as congressional boundary redistricting, so ripe with political confrontation, provides a fertile ground for the profuse growth of political rhetoric. The traditional two-party political system, charged by the two well-developed adversarial philosophies, generates a highly charged environment with messages begging for analysis. After numerous unsuccessful attempts at using existing political rhetorical theories to analyze the rhetoric resulting from Ohio's reapportionment maneuvers, the necessity for a suitable theory resulted in the production, design, and emergence of a new political communication theory providing sufficient framework to analyze the unique rhetoric of redistricting. This theory, called "rhetorical illusionism," consists of seven fundamental principles which provide the framework. This paper presents the rhetoric of Ohio's redistricting analyzed through this theory. As a background canvas, the paper invokes the ideas and practices of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, the noted "illusionism" artist, pointing out that this artistic tool, illusionism, has direct application to the art of rhetoric, and more specifically to the rhetoric of redistricting. Contains a 50-item bibliography. (NKA)