GOP Will Use The Concept Of Liberty To Destroy Democracy

Finally, there is the beginning of a media meme that is just beginning to realize that the Republican party has no concern for our democracy and the norms of governance that goes along with it. There was some initial shock when it was revealed that Mitch McConnell had refused to condemn the Russian hacking operation and threatened to accuse the Obama administration of partisan interference in the election if they went ahead unilaterally. That seems to have dissipated for some unknown reason now that Republicans won the election and McConnell is willing to look into the hacking in a bipartisan fashion, because the media loves anything they can call bipartisan. Some were even more surprised that the Republicans also received hacked information on down-ballot races, including some of the most competitive House races. Although there is no direct indication that Republican candidates used the information, PACs associated with those campaigns certainly did. And while senior Republican leaders were aware of the extent of Russian hacking, not one of them thought to criticize Trump when he actively encouraged the Russians to keep on hacking. Much of this has dropped off the radar as the media obsesses about the extent of the hacking and whether Putin was directly involved in the operation or not. For the media, that has an added benefit of not recognizing their own complicity in the hacking operation, arguably even greater than Republicans. But I do believe the focus will shift back to Republicans and their use of what they knew were stolen documents.

But collaborating with our enemy in order to win power, either through direct coordination or as an accessory after the fact, is just par for the course for Republicans. Electors in the Electoral College who have questioned the fitness of Donald Trump for the office of the President have been verbally threatened if they act “faithlessly”, intimating that their future career prospects will be destroyed.

That is peanuts compared to what Republicans are doing in North Carolina. After a close election was won by Democrat Roy Cooper, his GOP opponent Pat McCrory fought to overturn the result for weeks with one fruitless challenge after another. All the while McCrory was encouraged and aided by the Republican legislature. In addition, Democrats also gained control of the State Supreme Court, an important victory considering the legislature has been illegally gerrymandering the state this entire decade. But the Republican legislature is determined to not accept the results of the election and the will of the voters. The GOP leaders called a special session of the legislature in order to pass laws to neuter not only the Governor but also make access to the Supreme Court more difficult. When McCrory won election in 2013, the legislature increased the number of patronage jobs, or what is technically known as “exempt positions”, from 500 to 1,500. Now that the Democrat has become governor, the legislature is reducing those jobs to around 300, including eliminating his ability to appoint members to the UNC board of trustees and the state Board of Education. In addition, there is a proposal to end the governor’s party’s control of the elections boards around the state, something that worked exceedingly well to advantage McCrory during his attempts to contest the election but also to engage in suppression of Democratic votes. The latest proposal would force the boards to be split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, effectively rendering them totally toothless and ineffective. The legislature is also proposing that the Governor’s cabinet selections require confirmation by the State Senate, something that is currently not required. Based on the partisan nature of the legislature, this would probably mean no cabinet position would be filled by anyone Cooper would be likely to choose. The final legislative proposal is to no longer allow a direct constitutional challenge to the now Democratic State Supreme Court. Instead, all such cases would have to be heard by the State Court of Appeals which is still controlled by Republicans. This will technically not impede cases from being heard by the Supreme Court but I have no doubt that the Appeals Court will slow-walk as many important decisions as possible, especially those that pertain to voting rights. For these cases, justice delayed may truly be justice denied, especially considering illegally gerrymandered congressional districts in the state have been in place since 2011 and were only struck down this year, meaning two Congressional elections and one presidential election were held using illegal districts. There had been talk that the legislature would expand the number of justices in the Supreme Court and allow McCrory to fill them, essentially packing the court against the voters’ wishes. Thankfully, the legislature hasn’t gone there, yet.

This is not what the peaceful transition of power looks like and it is just another democratic norm that the GOP has destroyed. And it does not bode well for the time when Donald Trump is scheduled to leave the White House. The list of norms the GOP has already destroyed is long – the government shutdowns, using the country’s debt to blackmail a President, the use of torture and illegal surveillance, illegal gerrymandering and voter suppression, the refusal to even give a hearing much less a vote to a Supreme Court nominee, and the threat to not accept the results of the election. The GOP attack on democracy has been building for years. In his interview with the New Yorker, President Obama said, “We’ve seen this coming. Donald Trump is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party for the past ten, fifteen, twenty years. What surprised me was the degree to which the those tactics and rhetoric completely jumped the rails. There were no governing principles, there was no one to say, ‘No, this is going too far, this isn’t what stand for’. But we’ve seen it for eight years, even with reasonable people like John Boehner, who, when push came to shove, wouldn’t push back against those currents.” Sadly, Obama, of all people, should by now recognize that the Republicans only believe in the furtherance of their own power and taking care of their corporate masters while undoing the safety net for all of us. If the refusal to extend Medicaid, leaving millions to suffer and die for no other reason than opposing the idea of the right to quality healthcare, didn’t make that clear, then hopefully this election will.

While Obama rightly sees GOP tactics as the culmination of the last twenty years, I think Zachary Roth has identified their true motivations. Republicans see a demographic tide that they can not stop so their only option is to use virtually any means necessary to maintain power, democracy be damned. Roth says, “Today’s conservatives have no such confidence that the people are on their side. In fact, they are beginning to perceive that they’re in the minority – perhaps more glaringly than ever before. And yet this realization has brought with it another more hopeful one: being outnumbered doesn’t have to mean losing.” And, as they set about destroying our democracy, Republicans will constantly be emphasizing liberty over equality as a cover for their actions. For current Republicans, it is now about the primacy of liberty and an individual’s freedom from the demands of democracy, or, as they will call it, “mob rule”. Liberty is the rubric under which Republicans will allow people to continue to discriminate against the “other”, businesses to challenge and ignore regulation, including the minimum wage and paid sick leave, and establish the primacy of economic and property rights over civil rights. As the National Review declared, “It’s liberty, not democracy, that is America’s highest ideal.” Republicans rejection of democracy could have been made more clear.