The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, Just Hate it. — Truth, Lies & Politics
2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers. setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.
This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960's), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:
“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.”
Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, because racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?
Right.
As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting votes; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.
Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting in start at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.
It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.
Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.
For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.
Burrowing in for destruction
How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be ‘policy making’ positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by ‘presidential appointment’, basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called ‘burrowing’, placing political allies into civil positions, but this is one a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.
Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”
Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.
Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.
This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.
The Republicans don’t care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.
Originally published at https://www.tomtalkspolitics.com on December 2, 2020.