Republicans will not be chastened. Hell no.
“There has been some mistake, clearly,” writes Alexandra Petri of the Amazing Disappearing Red Wave. The Washington Post’s “lighter take” columnist ponders adjustments Republicans will make to convince a wider swath of Americans they are not all batshit crazy.
Give up forced-birth policies? Stop banning books? Ditch conspiracy theories? Welcome immigrants? Concede with grace? Oh, hell no!
The answer is simple: We have got to raise the voting age. Twenty-one? That might not be enough, honestly. Millennials are not as conservative as they ought to be and some of them are pushing 40 now. We should consider whether we might not want it to be higher than that. Fifty feels reasonable. A good, round number.
Petri is not far off. What happens each time Democrats win key races is Republican-controlled legislatures change the game, they hope, to improve their chances next time without changing themselves. Self-reflection is as much a sign of weakness as admitting error. True alpha males never do that.
Republicans once heavily promoted voting by mail. When Democrats began promoting it in numbers, Republicans turned against it.
Judge Michael Morgan, a black Democrat, won a North Carolina Supreme Court seat in 2016. He turned out 16-year incumbent Justice Robert H. Edmunds Jr. in a nonpartisan election. Republicans changed the rules for future elections to attach party labels to judicial candidates.
After Democrat Roy Cooper won a narrow victory for governor in 2016, Republicans in a lame duck session stripped the governorship of several appointment authorities and modified the makeup of the state elections board. Wisconsin Republicans treated incoming Democratic governor Tony Evers similarly two years later.
Requiring photo IDs, surgical gerrymandering, banning drop boxes, etc. (The ACLU has a list.) When in doubt, abuse the courts. Accuse opponents of cheating. Manipulate the electoral college process. Dismiss the will of voters and hand the choice of presidential electors to Republican legislatures. In 2021, violent insurrection was not out of the question.
Whenever I think the GOP has run out of angles for suppressing Democratic votes and rigging elections, they find another. Some as outlandish as criminalizing handing water to voters standing in lines. For the first time in my experience, multiple conservative voters alleged to election judges (different days and locations) that Democratic Party electioneering was harassment and/or illegal. I’ll be watching the new legislative session.
Republicans might put that creativity and cunning to work solving problems for struggling Americans of all colors and political persuasions. They could build a better America, improve more people’s lives, lighten their burdens, secure their health and futures. Spend more time governing than demolishing. But no.
Stay vigilant.