“gun fetish run amok”
“It’s hard to get 88 percent of Americans to agree the world is round,” columnist Jennifer Rubin tells MSNBC. Yet that many want something done to stop the “gun fetish run amok” in this country.
The “constitutional bias in favor of [political] minorities” plus the devolution of the Republican Party into an extremist, white-nationalist cult leaves 88 percent of us paying for the upkeep of a government that no longer responds to the will of the majority.
“When legislation on nearly every critical issue can be thwarted by an extreme minority, we have ‘democracy’ in name only,” Jennifer Rubin wrote last week.
Rubin makes some recommendations for the Democratic Party, prefaced with a huge IF:
If the Democratic Party — the only party that still supports democratic values and at least tries to solve problems — can muster the discipline and the will, it can run in 2022 and 2024 on ending the stranglehold of unhinged, minority rule. It must electrify its supporters, pledge to tame if not eliminate the filibuster and make clear that, without Democratic victories, we would face an America few would hope to bequeath their children. The Republican obsession with controlling women, unlimited gun ownership, white grievance and other deadly ideologies must be identified, denounced and defeated. Democrats should be clear about the choices: white nationalism or tolerance; gun massacres or reasonable gun restrictions; control of women’s bodies or respect for women’s autonomy.
Democrats should not rule out solutions that are immediately available. Remember, Republicans spent decades creating a Supreme Court that would destroy decades of precedent and impose its partisan will on the rest of the country. Democrats must seed the political ground not only for this election cycle but for the future. Constitutional amendments may be far-fetched now, but Democrats can initiate the debate on them. They can also move on other structural fixes, such as campaign finance reforms and limitations on lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices.
In what country is this normal? In what country is this tragedy acceptable? The cost of freedom?
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