The Minority Veto

Killing referenda, making voting harder, and letting representatives pick their voters, is how the Republican Party hopes to stay afloat.

Lacking a reasonable candidate or even a whiff of coherent policy, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) response to Joe Biden’s reelection announcement was a fictitious, artificial intelligence-generated (“AI”) video. It is telling in so many ways. They decided to phony up a video response that was like a third-rate disaster movie. Instead of showcasing their better way or better candidate (they have neither), the RNC’s phony video created fictional crises, and had “news” anchors “reporting” on Biden-caused economic collapse, and various international crises galore. Again, and to be crystal clear, they created events that have not happened in the real world. With nowhere else to turn, they had to rely on catastrophic-events…from the land of make believe.

Former conservative talk show host, Charlie Sykes, along with countless other people infected with common sense and decency, has run screaming from the Republican Party. Regarding the RNC fake video, Sykes wrote, “The GOP responded with an ad filled with made-up horribles that had not actually happened. Our dystopian future is here.”

As Nikki Haley pointed out when she announced her candidacy for president, the Republican Party has “lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections, and that has to change.” Sadly the party disagrees, and continues to try to restrict voting to just the people who will vote for them. Shouldn’t a party that can’t win elections ought to try appealing to more voters rather than resorting to gerrymandered districts they can’t possibly lose, and relying on tricks and deceit win office?

Cleta Mitchell, a Republican lawyer/operative who is teaching the party how to restrict voting, is the intellectual heir of Paul Weyrich, the founder of both “The Moral Majority” and the The Heritage Foundation. That’s the DC think tank behind the anti-CRT rhetoric. He infamously said, “I don’t want everyone to vote, and neither should you.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough has lately become optimistic (which is a novel and surprisingly good look for him) in the face of a Trump indictment, a Tucker firing, an outgunned Ukraine run by a small-in-stature Jewish comedian (not a Nazi) standing up to Russia, the neighborhood bully. “Morning Joe” has proclaimed a “return of gravity.”

Still, the Republican Party remains convinced that culture war trumps (pun intended) policy, and that minority rule, mockingly called democracy, is preferable to the real thing where majorities rule. Their latest sad gambit is to end referenda, the process by which ordinary citizens put questions of governance directly to the people via the ballot. Driving the slowest car on the track would lead most to devise a faster car, but it’s easier and faster to cheat. Just pour sugar in the other car’s gas tank.

This year, we’ve witnessed voters taking matters into their own hands and using referenda to protect abortion rights following a deeply unpopular Supreme Court decision reversing Roe v. Wade. This is what the American citizenry does when massively unpopular stances are foisted upon them.

Ever vigilant against majority rule, Ohio Republicans have unleashed a diabolical plan to require a super-majority of referendum voters to pass anything. To add barbed-wire to the obstacle course, they say they’ll change the rules in an August special election. Ohioans enjoying the only nice weather of their year aren’t likely to vote in August because they’re on the lake, at the campground, or visiting grandma in Northern Michigan. In an ultimate expression of irony, the measure to require that super-majority will need only a simple-majority to pass.

Missouri and Florida intend to follow suit. The most cynical power grab by far is in Arkansas where voters rejected making referenda harder to place on the ballot, so the governor, the Former Guy’s former mouthpiece, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, simply had her gerrymandered supermajority-legislature pass the unloved measure into law. Who needs voters?

Then there is the sad case of North Carolina, where the newly elected Republican-majority Supreme Court, unnecessarily, save for political reasons, reopened a settled case of redistricting, and reversed the standing law. Here’s former Attorney General, Eric Holder, who is trying to slow the devolution of American democracy at the hands of gerrymanders, “Make no mistake, this moment is the result of a concerted effort by too many in the Republican Party to bend—even break—the rules of our democracy in order to unfairly gain and then hold onto power. They fear they can’t win in a fair electoral system. Republicans have said themselves that state supreme court elections are ‘the next big political frontier.’ By planting partisan ideologues instead of fair-minded justices on the courts, they are weakening the independence of state judicial branches across the country in order to roll back rights and force unpopular policies—including abortion and democracy destruction—onto the people. We cannot allow them to succeed.”

At least they aren’t using AI to make Trump seem reasonable…yet.

©2023 Jon Sinton