Of, by, and for the most power-hungry
Ed Walker blogs at emptywheel. His message this Veterans Day: “Is it too much to ask Republicans to accept majority rule?”
Apparently, yes.
Ohio Republicans wasted no time in announcing their defiance of the constitutional amendment passed Tuesday that secured reproductive freedoms. The amendment passed 57-43:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Four Ohio Republican state lawmakers are seeking to strip judges of their power to interpret an abortion rights amendment after voters opted to enshrine those rights in the state’s constitution this week.
Republican state Reps. Jennifer Gross, Bill Dean, Melanie Miller and Beth Lear said in a news release Thursday that they’ll push to have the Legislature, not the courts, make any decisions about the amendment passed Tuesday.
“To prevent mischief by pro-abortion courts with Issue 1, Ohio legislators will consider removing jurisdiction from the judiciary over this ambiguous ballot initiative,” said the mix of fairly new and veteran lawmakers who are all vice-chairs of various House committees. “The Ohio legislature alone will consider what, if any, modifications to make to existing laws based on public hearings and input from legal experts on both sides.”
The wording of that “ambiguous ballot initiative”? It was the Ohio GOP’s wording. And still they lost.
Democrats’ former Ohio state chair David Pepper posted a letter signed by 27 GOP legislators from the Ohio House Pro-Life Caucus pledging to defy the amended constitution:
Pepper writes:
Specifically, they pledge: “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed based on perception of intent. [ie. the new Constitution] We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in this state, and we will continue that work.”
There are so many ways to respond to the specifics of their statement. Here are a few:
1) “perception of intent”? — it’s the law. The Constitution! Not some ephemeral “intent.” And while they now claim confusion, THEY were the ones who claimed that the words of the Amendment were both clear and sweeping, trying to scare voters to vote No. They spent millions running ads on all of this. They put out government propaganda on it, using your tax dollars. Yet now they say the language is confusing and cloudy, so they don’t plan to respect it.
2) “everything in our power”? Your power is bound by the Constitution you are now pledging to defy. You have NO power to defy the Constitution you swear an oath to.
3) “We were elected”? Almost all of you are in districts that were rigged (by you) to guarantee victory. The people didn’t have a choice. And your districts are in open violation of the same Constitution you now pledge to violate. This week’s Issue 1 vote is far more legitimate than your exercise of power in districts that violate Ohio law (due to your leadership’s intentional violation of that law)
There are more retorts, but I’ll stop there. Because they don’t get us very far, even if they need to be said.
What this is, again, is a declaration that they plan to violate both the new law and the clear will of the people of Ohio as best they can.
The kicking and gouging for every last sliver of power is further proof that the GOP is no longer a political party but an extremist authoritarian faction that refuses to accept democratic outcomes. Republican pedants insist the nation is a republic, not a democracy (meaning a pure democracy), despite the word vote appearing in the U.S. Constitution dozens of times and majority over a dozen
Their intense efforts at rigging elections, twisting the law, and mining it for loopholes for defying the will of the people is exhausting. Politicians have always done so in vying for advantage. But the effort today reinforces just how strong the temptation is to seek power for its own sake. The Trump cult’s plan for wringing service from the meaning of public servant can be no clearer.
Now Democrats in New York state are taking up the game with fresh intensity. God help us.
Update: Pepper later this morning reinforces why the extreme gerrymandering since the 2010 election is so toxic to democracy and feeds both radicalism and cynicism.
… there’s now an entire generation of officeholders in the majority who’ve come to power, remained in power, and in some cases, risen to higher levels of power, without ever winning a contested election. A contested, general election.
Some were appointed to their initial office and never faced one real election. Others…had a single moment where a narrow group of voters mattered, and that was that. The rest of their careers career, the voters have never been given another choice. They’ve never had to campaign again. And for most, that’s the only politics they know.
On the flip side, there’s a generation of folks who’ve aspired to be public servants but are locked out. Completely shut out, no matter their skills or the quality of their campaigns.
He’s not talking about a fraction or even half in places like Ohio.
“I’m talking about almost every member of the current majorities. An entire generation of them.”
You wonder why democracy scares the bejesus out of them. It’s almost as scary as nonwhite, non-Christians and women taking control in their lives.