ON CITIZENSHIP
This excellent editorial by Thomas Edsall lays out an indictment of the anti-democratic fervor in modern Republicanism. Republicans are made up of two core groups: Oligarchs and self-perceived cultural victims:
” When it comes to democratic backsliding in the states, the results couldn’t be clearer: over the past two decades, the Republican Party has eroded democracy in states under its control. Republican governments have gerrymandered districts, made it more difficult to vote and restricted civil liberties to a degree unprecedented since the civil rights era. It is not local changes in state-level polarization, competition or demographics driving these major changes in the rules of American democracy. Instead, it is the groups that make up the national coalition of the modern G.O.P. — the very wealthy on the one hand and those motivated by white identity politics and cultural resentment on the other.”
Why has the Republican party moved in this direction?
“[T] he two major elements of the Republican Party — extremely wealthy individuals in an era of high economic inequality and a voter base motivated by cultural and demographic threat — have a hard time winning electoral majorities on the basis of their policy agendas (a high-end tax cut agenda for the elite base and a culturally reactionary agenda for the electoral base), which increases their incentive to tweak the rules of the game to their advantage.”
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“At a certain point, the arc of history, which bends toward liberalism, means that traditional values among social conservatives lose their hegemonic status,” * * * which “is eventually reflected in progressive changes in the public policy agenda evident in many postindustrial societies during the late 20th century, from the spread of reproductive rights, equal pay for women and men, anti-sex-discrimination laws, passage of same-sex marriage laws, support for the international rules-based world order based on liberal democracy, free trade and human rights and concern about protection against environmental and climate change.”
“A consequence of this long-term cultural development for the losers, * * * is a buildup of “resentment at the loss of the hegemony of traditional values and identities.” The problem for the Republican Party, she observed, lies in the fact that “by appealing to their shrinking socially conservative base, the Republican Party has been unable to gain a majority of the popular vote in their bid for the White House in eight of the last nine presidential elections.”
This is what the Republicans are playing with when they assault “wokeness.” It fires up the culturally displaced base, but the core group is numerically shrinking to the point where, if normal electoral processes are allowed to play out, Republicans can’t win elections.
Instead, they have rigged the game, with sham elections, gerrymandering, and installation of a wholly illegitimate judiciary. [Clarence Thomas’s self-enrichment on the Court is not an aberration; self-enrichment is the entire point of the conservative Court. See Citizens United and the Roberts-led evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, along with Roberts’ hand-wringing refusal to get rid of party-centric gerrymandering.]
“Theda Skocpol, a professor of political science and sociology at Harvard, contended that many of the developments in states controlled by Republicans are a result of careful, long-term planning by conservative strategists, particularly those in the Federalist Society, who are developing tools to build what she called “minority authoritarianism” within the context of a nominally democratic system of government.
Skocpol outlined her thinking in an email:
The first-movers who figured out how to configure this new “laboratory of democratic constriction” were legal eagles in the Federalist Society and beyond, because the key structural dynamic in the current G.O.P. gallop toward minority authoritarianism is the mutual interlock between post-2010 Republican control, often supermajority control, of dozens of state legislatures and the SCOTUS decision in 2019 to allow even the most extreme and bizarre forms of partisan gerrymandering.
These organized, richly resourced actors, she wrote,”have figured out how to rig the current U.S. system of federalism and divided branches, given generational and geographic realities on the ground, and the in many ways fluky 2016 presidential election gave them what they needed to put the interlock in place. They are stoking and using the fears and resentments of about half or so of the G.O.P. popular base to undo American democracy and enhance their own power and privileges. They are doing it because they can, and they believe in what they are doing. They are America’s G.O.P. Leninists.
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This situation, locked in place by a corruptly installed Supreme Court majority and by many rotten-borough judicial districts like the one in Amarillo, means that minority authoritarians, behind a bare facade of “constitutionalism,” can render majority-elected officials, including the president and many governors, officials in name only. The great thing from the minority authoritarian point of view is that those visible chief executives (and urban mayors and district attorneys) can still be blamed for government nonfunction and societal problems, but they cannot address them with even broadly supported measures (such as simple background checks for having military assault weapons).
There are a number of factors that confirm Skocpol’s analysis.
First and foremost, the Republican Party’s commitment to democratic values and procedures has been steadily eroding over the past two decades — and the momentum has accelerated. The brakes on extremism are failing, with Donald Trump gaining strength in his bid for renomination and the continuing shift to the right in states like Tennessee and Ohio.”
But Edsall also points out that in Wisconsin, the stench of Republican toxic policies recently led to an outsized victory for the liberal Supreme Court candidate.
That model — engagement on state-wide races — is crucial to dislodge the fascist model. People like Kristin Sinema need to be swamped by the outraged majority. Even in states like Tennessee, efforts should be made to elect moderate Democrats for governor and US Senate.
We can’t pretend any longer that this is ordinary civics as we understood that concept 20 years ago. Republicans, by selecting who will be allowed to vote, do not consider the opposition to be citizens or even legitimate members of the same society. Obviously, women, trans people, and Blacks [Tim Scott notwithstanding] do not deserve a voice — or in some cases, do not deserve to even exist.
We need to reassert majority rule. We need to demand citizenship, not just for DACA dreamers, but for ourselves.