Growing Republican Tyranny

               I know the title of this post is sure to upset my right leaning friends, but I feel it is an important follow-up to my last post about who we want to be.  There is a growing trend within the Republican party to force their agenda through any means necessary or, at the very least, block every bit of governance coming from the left.  And it’s not just in Washington D.C; it’s happening at the state level as well.

               First, during the Obama administration Republicans in the Senate filibustered more nominees than were filibustered during all the previous administrations.  Now this claim has gotten much robust debate and so I turned to Politifact for help finding the truth.  In November of 2013 Harry Reid claimed that of the 168 nominees filibustered in the history of the United States, 82 of those occurred under President Obama.  As this article points out that claim is based on cloture motions filed.  Some candidates had multiple cloture motions filed, so the number is a bit misleading.  However, they don’t simply stop at calling the figures a bit misleading; Politifact went a bit deeper to see what the true numbers are.  Accounting for nominees with multiple cloture attempts, the researchers at Politifact determined that only 68 nominees had been blocked before 2009, while 79 had been blocked since 2009.  This massive increase in filibusters did nothing but slow down and weaken the ability of the government to function.  Tyranny is defined as the despotic abuse of power.  One cannot reasonably argue that President Obama’s nominees were so bad as to justify such obstruction.  The massive amount of filibustering that Republicans foisted upon President Obama was nothing short of tyranny by the minority.

               Second, Republican refusal to consider the nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court seems to clearly meet the other definition of tyranny – the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power.  Republicans, including Mitch McConnell has first put forth Garland’s name as a judge that could reasonably pass through the Senate.  But when push came to shove, they dishonored the institution in which they serve by flat out refusing to do their job.  It’s too bad their employers didn’t fire them for such disregard for their duties.  Their refusal to consider the nomination was completely arbitrary as there were no actual reasonable grounds not to consider the nomination.  The election year argument is weak when you consider that during the 20^th century there were 6 justices nominated and confirmed during an election year.  Clearly past Senates had no trouble doing their job.

               Finally (at least congressionally) there is the current Congress.  The Republicans running that circus have made it clear they are not going to work with Democrats on the major legislation.  The “repeal and replace” health care attempts are being done strictly through the budget reconciliation process.  A process that only needs a simple majority to pass through Congress.  In other words, they don’t need a single Democratic vote to pass it.  The AHCA doesn’t actually remove the individual mandate; it just eliminates the tax penalty if you don’t have insurance.  Removing the mandate would require a 60% majority (meaning Democrats have to vote for it).

               Now it’s not just the Republicans at the national level who are behaving tyrannically; it’s state Republicans as well.  When the city of Milwaukee passed a bill providing for paid sick leave in November 2008, Wisconsin’s Republican governor responded with a bill barring municipalities from doing just that the following May.  In fact, several states are passing legislation to ban municipalities from offering paid sick leave.  When Cleveland considered a bill raising minimum wage, Republicans in the Ohio statehouse passed a bill banning such a move.  This Slate article covers the people driving these pre-emption laws, so called because they often pre-empt efforts by municipalities to govern themselves.  And it provides several more examples of Republican states that are suppressing the rights of the citizens who live within cities in those states.  And here I thought Republicans believed that the best government was the one closest to the people.  Guess I was wrong.

               Then there’s the case of North Carolina.  Republicans in Raleigh have committed some serious and blatant violations of the basic tenets of democracy.  The 2016 gubernatorial race was a close and very contentious race between Republican incumbent Pat McCrory and Democratic challenger Roy Cooper.  Cooper won and McCrory demanded a recount.  Tight race, very heated, narrow margin of victory – I get why McCrory felt he had to fight past Election Day.  However, the real problem is the way the Republican legislature behaved after McCrory conceded the election.  They immediately moved to strip powers away from the executive branch – demanding the executive nominees be confirmed by the senate, changing the makeup of the state election board, and changing county election boards as well.  North Carolina’s constitution has some of the most strictly defined separation of powers of any of the states in the U.S.  As such, it didn’t take long for the court to rule that Republican efforts denied Governor Cooper the powers vested in the executive branch by the state constitution.  It’s hard to see where Republicans would have felt compelled to pass such measures had McCrory won re-election.  It’s also hard to see such a move as anything other than a despotic attempt to deny power to the opposing party.  Especially since the legislature is basically trying to pass the same measures, just a slight bit less aggressive.  Of course, the blatant attempts to steal power from the executive branch isn’t the only problem in North Carolina.  The disastrous HB-2 bill overrode efforts by Charlotte to pass pro-LGBTQ legislation.  HB-2 led to the ACC and NCAA moving championship games away from NC, and a host of other negative consequences.  Republicans made a token gesture of toning down the language in HB-2 without actually changing what the law did and so the ACC and NCAA came back.  In response one legislator is proposing a bill that would force UNC and NC State to withdraw from the ACC if the conference or the NCAA pull any championship games out of North Carolina again.  Nevermind that such a move would cost the schools somewhere in the neighborhood of $90 million each to do so.

               Lastly, there are the multitude of Republican states with voting issues.  For starters many states are passing very strict voter ID laws – laws that tend to favor white men (largest segment of Republican voters) and hurt minorities, women, poor voters, and elderly voters (voters more likely to vote Democratic).  In all fairness, the latest research suggests problems with the earlier study.  Despite the flaws in the research, the Vox article still does note that these laws may be still be racially discriminatory; it’s just that the effect is negligible.  Recent gerrymander issues aren’t so insignificant.  Texas, Alabama, and North Carolina have all had their most recent gerrymanders (done after the 2010 census) ruled unconstitutional for racial discrimination.  Not surprising, they're all Republican dominated legislatures.

               All of this leads me to see the Republicans as a bunch of petulant 5 year-olds throwing temper tantrums because they didn’t get what they want.  As I’ve pointed out before, we’re not all Republicans.  We all have different views and different beliefs on the entire spectrum of things political.  Republicans don’t seem to understand this point.  They seem infused with a belief that I’ll call the “divine right of the Republican Party.” Much like the old “Divine Right of Kings” that many European monarchies used to support their rule, Republicans seem to think that they have been blessed by God with governing superpowers that allow them to ignore the will of the people.  If they somehow wind up in the minority, then it’s their “duty” to obstruct any ability for the Democratic Party to govern.  If urban communities want rights outside of Republican beliefs, it’s their responsibility to pass laws denying those citizens even the right at self-determination.

               Now, I have friends who are Republicans and I certainly don’t think all Republican voters agree with the actions of Republican lawmakers.  However, the attacks upon democracy that Republicans have committed over the last several years should be a wakeup call to everyone who believes in the vision of the United States that our Founding Fathers had.  James Madison argued in Federalist Paper 51 that "the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority."  Unfortunately, we have sadly coalesced into two groups.  Over the last 8 years, this has turned into a tug of war between the two parties.  The problem is that one group, Republicans, believe in never compromising on anything (thank you Freedom Caucus).  Until we start voting in moderates and kicking out the extremists, we are going to continue to tear ourselves apart at the seams.