Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) and Speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly Robin Vos (R-Rochester)
Wisconsin Republicans have become a national embarrassment by immediately convening an “extraordinary” session of the Legislature to sabotage the results of last month’s election, in which Democrats won every statewide office.
It’s national news when a state’s Republicans refuse to accept the will of the voters in a democracy and ram through partisan laws crafted behind closed doors to strip elected Democrats, including Governor-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, of the power to carry out the agenda that won the election.
But, for anyone from Wisconsin, the reaction is simply: What else is new? That really should be the reaction of any American who’s paid attention to the corruption of the Republican Party. It’s no secret Republicans are now openly contemptuous of democracy and increasingly brazen about doing anything possible to disenfranchise anyone who might vote for their opponents. Being a Democrat in America is no crime, but Republicans believe it should be.
The reason Republicans oppose democracy is obvious. The tactics they rely upon to win elections—enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and stirring racial hatred among the white working class—don’t have majority support. The last two Republicans to become president actually received fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. George W. Bush received more than 540,000 fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000, while Donald Trump got nearly 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016.
GOP Voter Theft
Twice in modern times, a weird, undemocratic, electoral glitch we’ve never fixed has elected losing Republican candidates to the presidency (with some unethical help for Bush from Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court). When we were in high school, decades ago, the most overworked debate question was “Should the Electoral College Be Abolished?” We’ve always known the right answer. In a democracy, the candidate who gets the most votes is supposed to win.
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But, instead of repairing our democracy, Republicans resort to subterfuge to prevent as many Democrats as possible from voting. Their dishonest, undemocratic tactics include requiring forms of identification many Democrats don’t possess, massive purging of voting rolls to eliminate registrations of millions of Democrats and corrupt gerrymandering to make votes by Democrats meaningless. In North Carolina, a Republican campaign operative actually went door-to-door, stealing absentee ballots. Everyone knows Republican claims they’re preventing vote fraud are transparent lies. Disenfranchising millions of legitimate voters in a democracy is vote fraud.
Republicans holding an overwhelming majority in the Wisconsin Assembly have absolutely no fear of any political consequences for invalidating the votes of the citizens of Wisconsin. Legislators cynically believe they’ve so corruptly gerrymandered their own voting districts they can never be defeated. They might be right. In November’s election, Democrats won 53% of the votes cast statewide in Assembly races, yet Republicans still retained their ridiculously lopsided 63 to 36 seat Assembly majority, mostly thanks to their dishonest manipulation of district lines.
However, Republicans could also be very wrong. Many of the 40 Republican congressional seats Democrats flipped nationally to gain control of the House of Representatives were just as dishonestly gerrymandered to ensure the election of Republicans. Strong Democratic candidates and outrage over Republican corruption still wiped out double digit Republican advantages. Now, Wisconsin Republicans are openly increasing that outrage in advance of what, for decent Americans, could be the most publicly infuriating presidential reelection campaign in the nation’s history.
Particularly appalling were the changes Republicans were hellbent on preventing Evers and Kaul from making to improve lives in Wisconsin. The number one issue that got Evers and Kaul—as well as many Democrats across the country—elected was promising to stop the relentless Republican attempts to destroy affordable health care, including government subsidies to lower cost and guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions. Republicans proved they’re still completely out of touch with voters on the issue by preventing Evers and Kaul from ending state participation in yet another Republican lawsuit to destroy health care for millions of Americans.
“I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” Bruce Springsteen wrote that line about a serial killer, but it also applies to Republicans. Of utmost importance to the party was making sure Evers doesn’t allow poor people to eat or receive medical care unless they have jobs. Everyone else can go die. And, of course, Republicans want to drastically reduce early voting. If you don’t believe in democracy, you certainly don’t want to make it easier for people to vote. Previous Republican attempts to limit convenient voting have been ruled unconstitutional, but Republicans are hopeful they’ve put more judges on the bench who don’t care what that damned Constitution says.
We certainly can’t count on the corrupt Republican majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court to protect us from corrupt Republican legislators attacking democracy. All patriotic Americans can do is continue electing candidates who believe in democracy. Go ahead. Tell Republicans: “Love it or leave it.”
