“We do not want to be a democracy”*
Republicans want to roll back the 20th century a quarter of the way into the 21st. They’ve made no bones about it for decades. In his heyday during the George W. Bush administration prior to the September 11 attacks, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform busily strong-armed Republicans into signing his anti-tax pledge. He dreamed of returning America to “the McKinley era, absent the protectionism.” He wanted, famously, to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
Norquist was a radical for his day. But not so radical that he imagined chucking the Constitution itself along with the last 100 years. Among today’s MAGA Republicans, he’s a RINO.
Nancy MacLean, author of “Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” suggests the remnant of the southern planter class, economic royalists and academic libertarians, undertook affecting a restoration of elite dominance beginning in the late 1940s. Their goal: to save capitalism from democracy. They want to roll back the 20th century and have been patient about achieving it. And subtly incremental, rarely revealing the sweep of their plans. “One fish, one hook,” as Norquist put it.
Then came the first black president. Subtlety was for pikers. McKinley? They want to roll back the Enlightenment, modernity, the works. Give us feudalism or give us death!
David Frum was late to his own party when in January 2018 he declared, “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Three years later, MAGA foot soldiers sacked the U.S. Capitol at Donald Trump’s command. Last week, Trump’s attorneys argued before the U.S. Supreme Court for return to something like the divine right of kings: presidential immunity for life. The MAGA wing of the court is thinking it over.
“We do not want to be a democracy”
On the other side of the country in Spokane, Washington, state Republicans the prior weekend proved how much distance they’ve put between themselves and their party’s first president. At their state convention, they moved beyond the rhetorical “a republic not a democracy” to formally rejecting government of the people, by the people, for the people — the whole democracy thing.
Columnist Danny Westneat writes in the The Seattle Times:
A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.
“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. “We do not want to be a democracy.”
We don’t? There are debates about how complete of a democracy we wish to be; for example, the state Democratic Party platform has called for the direct election of the president (doing away with the Electoral College). But curtailing our own vote? The GOPers said they hoped states’ rights would be strengthened with such a move.
Then they kicked it up a notch. They passed a resolution calling on people to please stop using the word “democracy.”
If Democrats are their enemy, then any hint of democracy carries a taint. Out, out, damned one person, one vote.
“We encourage Republicans to substitute the words ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ where previously they have used the word ‘democracy,’ ” the resolution says. “Every time the word ‘democracy’ is used favorably it serves to promote the principles of the Democratic Party, the principles of which we ardently oppose.”
Ardently. “We … oppose legislation which makes our nation more democratic in nature.”
Westneat adds:
It wasn’t that long ago when Republican presidents would extol democracy as America’s greatest export. Or sometimes try to share it with others down the barrel of a gun (see George W. Bush, Iraq).
Now the party is saying they don’t even want to hear the d-word anymore.
Washington state Republicans only stopped short of demanding a swear jar in every Republican office.
Sure, our representative democracy contains flaws we are still struggling in fits and starts to perfect. But “Republicans Aren’t Against Democracy,” Ramesh Ponnuru wrote in a 2021 op-ed. “You can find the odd monarchist on the internet, but American conservatives … are generally committed to self-government.”
Ponnuru might want to review the transcript of last week’s oral arguments in Trump v. United States. MAGA Republicans are putting their opposition to democratic principles in writing.
Turn in your flags.
* https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomkraft_Nein_Danke.svg
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.