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Ongoing US GOP Debacle Thread: Seditious Republicans march toward authoritarianism

Over the past two years the Senate has confirmed a record number of judicial nominees. I have proudly voted for more than 99% of them, and will continue to support quality candidates in the future.

I am saddened that in the editorial “Democrats and Racial Division” (Dec. 1) you attempt to deflect the concerns regarding Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench. While you are right that his nomination should be seen through a wider lens, the solution isn’t simply to decry “racial attacks.” Instead, we should stop bringing candidates with questionable track records on race before the full Senate for a vote.

Unfortunately, there are those in this country who see racism in everything, and they are countered by those who believe racism no longer exists in any substantive way. While our nation has made significant progress over the past 50 years, there is no doubt we still have work left to do.

What this means, regardless of the obvious issues the Democratic Party has on race, is that the Republican Party must strive to do better. We can build on the momentum of opportunity zones and criminal-justice reform to show we are serious about tackling real issues facing people of color. I know conservative solutions can transform lives, but if folks don’t trust us, implementing those solutions becomes impossible.

We must not seek to sow the seeds of discord, but rather embrace the power of unity. Simply put, if the Senate votes on a candidate that doesn’t move us in that direction, I will not support him or her. Our country deserves better.

Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.)

North Charleston, S.C.
 
Meadows has already been in trouble with the ethics committee once. So yeah, perfect Trump pick.
 
That was more a letter to the editor than an editorial.

Wonder how long it will take him to realize racial animus is a feature not a bug of his party.
 
The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian

Alarmist? Yep. Reasonable to be so? Yep.



Donald Trump, it turns out, may have been the best thing that could have happened to American democracy.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. Individual-1 is clearly a wannabe dictator who has contempt for the rule of law, not to mention being corrupt and probably in the pocket of foreign powers. But he’s also lazy, undisciplined, self-absorbed and inept. And since the threat to democracy is much broader and deeper than one man, we’re actually fortunate that the forces menacing America have such a ludicrous person as their public face.

Yet those forces may prevail all the same.

If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. As the authors — professors of government at Harvard — point out, in recent decades a number of nominally democratic nations have become de facto authoritarian, one-party states. Yet none of them have had classic military coups, with tanks in the street.

What we’ve seen instead are coups of a subtler form: takeovers or intimidation of the news media, rigged elections that disenfranchise opposing voters, new rules of the game that give the ruling party overwhelming control even if it loses the popular vote, corrupted courts.

The classic example is Hungary, where Fidesz, the white nationalist governing party, has effectively taken over the bulk of the media; destroyed the independence of the judiciary; rigged voting to enfranchise supporters and disenfranchise opponents; gerrymandered electoral districts in its favor; and altered the rules so that a minority in the popular vote translates into a supermajority in the legislature.

Does a lot of this sound familiar? It should. You see, Republicans have been adopting similar tactics — not at the federal level (yet), but in states they control.

As Levitsky and Ziblatt say, the states, which Justice Louis Brandeis famously pronounced the laboratories of democracy, “are in danger of becoming laboratories of authoritarianism as those in power rewrite electoral rules, redraw constituencies and even rescind voting rights to ensure that they do not lose.”

Thus, voter purges and deliberate restriction of minority access to the polls have become standard practice in much of America. Would Brian Kemp, the governor-elect of Georgia — who oversaw his own election as secretary of state — have won without these tactics? Almost certainly not.

And the G.O.P. has engaged in extreme gerrymandering. Some people have been reassured by the fact that the Democratic landslide in the popular vote for the House did, in fact, translate into a comparable majority in seats held. But you get a lot less reassured if you look at what happened at the state level, where votes often weren’t reflected in terms of control of state legislatures.

Let’s talk, in particular, about what’s happening in Wisconsin.

There has been a fair amount of reporting on the power grab currently underway in Madison. Having lost every statewide office in Wisconsin last month, Republicans are using the lame-duck legislative session to drastically curtail these offices’ power, effectively keeping rule over the state in the hands of the G.O.P.-controlled Legislature.

What has gotten less emphasis is the fact that G.O.P. legislative control is also undemocratic. Last month Democratic candidates received 54 percent of the votes in State Assembly elections — but they ended up with only 37 percent of the seats.

In other words, Wisconsin is turning into Hungary on the Great Lakes, a state that may hold elections, but where elections don’t matter, because the ruling party retains control no matter what voters do.

And here’s the thing: As far as I can tell, not a single prominent Republican in Washington has condemned the power grab in Wisconsin, the similar grab in Michigan, or even what looks like outright electoral fraud in North Carolina. Elected Republicans don’t just increasingly share the values of white nationalist parties like Fidesz or Poland’s Law and Justice; they also share those parties’ contempt for democracy. The G.O.P. is an authoritarian party in waiting.

Which is why we should be grateful for Trump. If he weren’t so flamboyantly awful, Democrats might have won the House popular vote by only 4 or 5 points, not 8.6 points. And in that case, Republicans might have maintained control — and we’d be well along the path to permanent one-party rule. Instead, we’re heading for a period of divided government, in which the opposition party has both the power to block legislation and, perhaps even more important, the ability to conduct investigations backed by subpoena power into Trump administration malfeasance.

But this may be no more than a respite. For whatever may happen to Donald Trump, his party has turned its back on democracy. And that should terrify you.

The fact is that the G.O.P., as currently constituted, is willing to do whatever it takes to seize and hold power. And as long as that remains true, and Republicans remain politically competitive, we will be one election away from losing democracy in America.
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Hypothetical for anyone: let's say Democrats win back the Presidency and keep the House for the next 8-12 years, but the Senate remains in GOP hands due to their advantages inherent in Senatorial elections. Without any indication of moderation from the GOP on the horizon, let's assume for the sake of the hypothetical that polarization remains relatively static compared to current levels. What happens then? Would we need to call another Constitutional convention? If governance becomes impossible, what steps would be necessary to fix this completely broken system?
 
AsesinoDeTortugas said:
Hypothetical for anyone: let's say Democrats win back the Presidency and keep the House for the next 8-12 years, but the Senate remains in GOP hands due to their advantages inherent in Senatorial elections. Without any indication of moderation from the GOP on the horizon, let's assume for the sake of the hypothetical that polarization remains relatively static compared to current levels. What happens then? Would we need to call another Constitutional convention? If governance becomes impossible, what steps would be necessary to fix this completely broken system?
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revolution
 
only kind of half joking there but I think there are too many global crises that are converging that neoliberalism won't be able to deal with.
 
10 years ago, Democrats won 60 seats in the Senate. 8 years ago people were saying Republicans had gerrymanded the House to the point Democrats couldn't win.

I think there are inherent problems with how we determine representation. And I think changes need to made starting with statehood for DC and PR. But it's way too early to assume these issues can't be overcome.
 
AsesinoDeTortugas said:
Hypothetical for anyone: let's say Democrats win back the Presidency and keep the House for the next 8-12 years, but the Senate remains in GOP hands due to their advantages inherent in Senatorial elections. Without any indication of moderation from the GOP on the horizon, let's assume for the sake of the hypothetical that polarization remains relatively static compared to current levels. What happens then? Would we need to call another Constitutional convention? If governance becomes impossible, what steps would be necessary to fix this completely broken system?
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I would not trust a Constitutional Convention called in the modern day.
 
 
PhDeac said:
10 years ago, Democrats won 60 seats in the Senate. 8 years ago people were saying Republicans had gerrymanded the House to the point Democrats couldn't win.

I think there are inherent problems with how we determine representation. And I think changes need to made starting with statehood for DC and PR. But it's way too early to assume these issues can't be overcome.
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This. Pundits and commentators get paid to peddle cynicism. We learned this year that grassroots action is the best political strategy.

Get out there and start knocking on doors. Phone bank. Text bank. Show up to city council meetings. Participate.

Representative democracy is far from perfect, but it does require that the so-called middle actually gets off its collective ass and does something to, you know, effect democracy.
 
David Frum wrote in “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic”: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.”
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What a line
 
Let’s dispel with this fiction that Marco Rubio has dignity. There’s no dignity in capitulating to Trumpism or shilling for the NRA in the wake of a school shooting.
 
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