The Republican plot against American democracy is not a myth, a slogan, or a theory. It would probably make a very bad movie with an implausible story line. But it’s none of those things. It’s a contemporary Republican policy—and it’s in full operational mode.

I’m usually not a conspiracy theorist, but recent actions that are damaging the cornerstones of American democracy have me very worried. Over the past 30 years, we have witnessed—and tolerated—the slow poisoning of America’s democratic institutions, and the pace has accelerated dramatically in the 2016 election cycle. Put all of the pieces together, and you have a relentless and escalating assault on all three branches of our government, plus a significant chunk of the Bill of Rights.

Here are some elements of the plot:

Immobilizing the legislative branch of the federal government

We now know that, from day 1 one of Obama administration, Republican Congressional leaders vowed to block anything that Obama proposed—even if it was good for their constituents or for the country at-large. They have blockaded the legislative branch of government. They barely show up for work. It’s as though they’ve been on strike for eight years. Almost no legislation has worked its way through the House and Senate, as would be normally expected.

One-third of our system is at a standstill. I don’t remember hearing about that as an option in Civics 101.

Shutting down all government functions

Republicans in Congress went so far, in 2013, as to completely shut down the entire federal government for 16 days. They’ve threatened to repeat that action again and again, as a way of blackmailing the country into accepting their radical agenda regarding the federal budget, the debt ceiling, defunding Planned Parenthood, etc.  Shutting down the federal government is a beyond-belief, extreme measure. It’s an all-out assault on another third of our system—the executive branch.

This strategy isn’t new, it’s just being used more radically than ever. For decades, we’ve heard Republicans call for an end to certain regulatory agencies—such as EPA, OSHA, and the NLRB, agencies that restrict corporations from harming their workers. The total shutdown tactic is just anti-regulatory fervor taken to its illogical extreme.  And if you ever wanted proof that Republicans are trying to repeal democracy and replace it with something much less democratic, this behavior is it.

Crippling—if not destroying—the Supreme Court

And now, we have the ultimate assault on the third branch of government—the judiciary. Current tactics go far beyond the now quaint practice of slow-walking approvals of federal judges. We are now at DefCon 1—a total stonewalling of appointments to the Supreme Court. Who would ever have thought that, after the death of a Supreme Court Justice, the Senate would refuse even to hold a hearing on a nominee? Even worse, Republican leaders in the Senate now have vowed to reject anyone nominated to the US Supreme Court by a Democrat. This behavior makes you wonder if Republicans simply want to let the Supreme Court die by attrition, because they don’t like some of its recent decisions.

But Republicans are not limiting their attack to the three basic branches of our federal government. They are now engaged in a full-frontal assault on the Bill of Rights [except, of course, for the 2^nd Amendment.] Here are just a few examples:

Delegitimizing the Presidential election

The most recent example came when Presidential candidate Donald Trump made the shocking, unprecedented assertion that he would not necessarily accept the results of the 2016 Presidential election. That statement elicited gasps, even from Republicans, who immediately understood the democracy-destroying effect such a stance would have. American democracy has prided itself, for its 240-year history, on the peaceful transfer of power. When Donald Trump calls the election system “rigged,” and encourages his followers to reject the results, we are in serious trouble. Of course, Trump’s irresponsible statement did not come out of the blue. It merely represents the culmination of many years of Republican propaganda about voter fraud, which have planted seeds of doubt in the minds of many. If our election system loses the trust of the people, we have begun the descent into anarchy.

Undermining the right to vote

Republican governors and state legislators have been on a voter-suppression rampage. They are using blatantly unfair strategies, such as voter caging, to purge legitimate voters from the rolls. They are making it harder to vote, by demanding unnecessary photo IDs, restricting voting hours and reducing the number of voting locations. When the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote is limited or even denied by politically motivated actions, one of the essential pillars of American democracy begins to crumble.

By the way, it should be noted that these dangerous ideas are not new. Think back a couple of decades to the Reagan years, when budget director David Stockman voiced the “starve-the-beast” philosophy. The idea was to cut taxes, thereby so drastically reducing funding that government agencies would wither, shrink and be so small that one could “drown them in the bathtub.” The cynical corollary, as I understand it, was that when government was inadequately funded, it would become dysfunctional, making citizens see that government just doesn’t work. He and his contemporaries probably were using the term “government” to mean corporate and industrial regulations, as well as spending on the social safety net. Stockman later disavowed his own theory, but it lives on today, in a much more extreme incarnation.

The examples I’ve cited are far from an exhaustive list. I’m sure there area lot more. [For example, Donald Trump has said that we should rescind the clause in the 14^th Amendment that states that children born in the United States become American citizens regardless of the citizenship of their parents. How’s that for a takedown of a basic American value?]

I’m not a constitutional scholar, but even I can see that, taken together, these positions and actions add up to something very nefarious. They paint a really scary and bleak picture for the future of American democracy—if we let radical Republicans remain in control.

Vote.

The post The plot to kill American democracy: This is not a movie appeared first on Occasional Planet.

American democracy—or, at least, the flawed, but better-than-the-alternative system that we call democracy—is under attack, and not from Muslim terrorists. Our democratic system, with all of its warts, has managed for 237 years [with the major exception of the Civil War, of course], to remain stable and to preserve the peaceful transition of power. Over many years, it has been corrupted by under- and over-the-table campaign contributions, over-influenced by corporate greed, undermined by power-hungry, headline-seeking, morally bankrupt politicians, and—more recently—battered by partisan gridlock fueled by blind hatred for our current President.

Now, these well-worn tactics have been joined by Republican-led strategies aimed directly at the heart of our system—voting rights and even the existence of “united” states. We need to worry less about foreign terrorists determined to hurt America, and recognize the bad actors in our own political system who are wrecking our democracy from within.

Here’s my review of the top four domestic conspiracies to kill democracy that are operational in 2013:

[1]  Voter suppression

It’s not new, but it’s intensifying. The most recent incarnation of this tactic took place in Colorado, during the September 2013, special recall election. Just before the election, the state board of election issued confusing rules on mail-in voting. Mail-in votes comprised 70 percent of votes in the 2012 presidential election, and many voters had come to rely on that method, only to discover that they might not be receiving their expected mail-in ballot for the special election.  According to Fox News (!):

In total, there have been six changes since Colorado’s governor announced the recall date on July 18.

In previous elections, Coloradans were able to cast their ballots by mail and most – around 70 percent – did. A new state law had initially meant that the recall would be decided entirely by mail. However, multiple county clerks told election officials they didn’t have enough time to send out the mail-in ballots because of an Aug. 12 ruling that gave other candidates until Aug. 26 to submit enough signatures to get themselves on the ballot.

Because of that ruling, it meant that voters [in the districts of the recalled legislators, Morse and Giron] would have to go to polling locations in their county to cast ballots.

In other states, legislators spent considerable time in 2013 proposing laws that would restrict voting rights. If you thought the 2012 fights over voter ID in Pennsylvania, and early voting in Florida and Ohio were flukes, think again.  Statistical analyses show, again and again, that voter turnout is the deciding factor in many elections—state, local and federal. When voter turnout is high, Democrats win. When it is low, Republicans win. Republicans have read those numbers, and many see their best chances of winning coming not from adopting more appealing, humane policies, but by crippling democracy and making it harder for their opponents to vote. Such is the sorry state of American politics today.

[2]  Recall election[s] over a single vote

Colorado’s successful [I hesitate to call it that] recall of two Democratic state legislators who voted in favor of reasonable gun registration laws is a very bad precedent. The recall was funded by the National Rifle Association, and it sets the stage for future recalls, in other states, based on single issues. Once upon a time, in a democracy now in serious jeopardy, we used to voice our displeasure about legislators’ votes by voting them out of office in the next scheduled election. That’s part of the peaceful transition of power that has characterized American democracy since its inception. While recalls are legitimate in certain cases, this single-issue recall tactic is an aggressive assault on the way we normally do elective business. If it proliferates—and its “success” in Colorado can only encourage its proponents—it could create electoral chaos.

[3]  Nullification of federal laws

Although most of us thought that nullification was a battle decided by the Civil War, it’s ba-a-a-a-ck. In 2013 in Missouri, radical right state legislators passed a law declaring federal gun laws null, void and unenforceable in the state. Wow. Fortunately, the cooler head of Democratic Governor Jay Nixon prevailed, and his veto of that bill was upheld in a special legislative session in September. Even the Republican Speaker Pro Tem of the Missouri Senate saw the gun bill as unconstitutional—and for him to say that was a political risk. The fight, however, is not over. Republicans in the Missouri legislature are already planning to introduce another, somewhat watered down version of the same bill in the 2014 session.

Missouri Republicans are not alone in their attempt to stop federal laws from being enforced in their state.  And these efforts are not just limited to gun laws.

Another focus of nullification efforts is the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

In Pennsylvania, for example, state officials are telling Obamacare “navigators” –the people hired to help individuals work the new health-care exchanges—that they cannot do their jobs on state-owned property. What they mean is that federal employees won’t be allowed to help people in state welfare offices, unemployment offices and health clinics—precisely the places visited by people who would benefit most from the exchanges.

The same tactic is at work in Florida, where the State Department of Health is barring navigators from its state property, too. [By the way, Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, is a very wealthy, former healthcare executive—a crooked one at that–who should know better. But, apparently, he wants to block something that would help his state, because it comes from President Obama.]

Each of these instances—and many more to come—are reminiscent of the “good old days” when Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse doorway to block “Negroes” from enrolling in the University of Alabama under federal law. He lost that fight, as the South, in the Civil War, lost its attempt to nullify federal anti-slavery laws and assert states’ rights over federal law. But those lessons seem not to matter to today’s Obama-hating Republicans.

[4]  Suggestions of secession

Texas is today’s poster state for awful ideas and dumb politicians [see: Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Louis Gohmert], but in our 24-hour-news-cycle world, even terrible ideas get play. So it’s rather terrifying to hear Texas’ Railroad Commissioner [who job it is not to regulate railroads, but to oversee the gas and oil industry in his state] mention secession as a possibility. It’s equally scary to hear a U.S. Senator say the same thing. We’ve done this before [see: Civil War], and it doesn’t work. I realize that the [government-paid!] officials who make these rash, anti-government pronouncements probably aren’t serious—they’re basically using these extreme statements as a way to rally the basest of their base and raise money—but there are a lot of gullible, low-information—possibly gun toting—people out there who take these ideas seriously. When someone filed a petition for secession on the White House’s petition site, 126,000+ people signed on.

Bottom line: If we can’t trust our voting system, if a few ultra-rich can determine the outcome of an election, if we can’t count on federal laws being enforced, and if people are floating the idea of secession, what is left?

The post Four ways Republicans are guilty of attempting to murder democracy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Americans woke up on November 7 having elected a Democratic president, expanded the Democratic majority in the Senate, and preserved the Republican majority in the House. That’s not what they voted for, though.

Most Americans voted for Democratic representation in the House. The votes are still being counted, but as of now it looks as if Democrats have a slight edge in the popular vote for House seats, 49 percent-48.2 percent, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Still, as the Post‘s Aaron Blake notes, the 233-195 seat majority the GOP will likely end up with represents the GOP’s “second-biggest House majority in 60 years and their third-biggest since the Great Depression.”

Republicans took advantage of their majority status in some states to redistrict for both state and U.S. legislatures, redrawing the lines in their favor. So even though Democratic candidates for the House garnered the most actual votes (popular vote), Republicans have taken super majorities in states like Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

After Republicans swept into power in state legislatures in 2010, the GOP gerrymandered key states, redrawing House district boundaries to favor Republicans. In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates received half of the votes in House contests, but Republicans will claim about three-quarters of the congressional seats.

If this seems familiar, it’s because Missouri Republicans did the same thing here, effectively taking Russ Carnahan out of the game and leaving us one Democratic representative short. The GOP’s “win by any means, at any cost” behavior is the antithesis of democracy, but by all accounts that won’t stop them from stepping all over it in their attempt to gain and retain power.

Leave it to the Republicans to have a back-up plan in case their voter suppression efforts didn’t pay off with election victories in November. Beware all you states with GOP majorities: once they are installed in office, they will have to be dragged from it kicking and screaming. We will have Republican “leadership” (read: obstruction) whether we vote for it or not.

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