Photo credit: Vijay Kumar Koulampet
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature no longer even pretends to represent the interests of its state’s citizens.
The irrefutable evidence was the seconds-long special session Republicans held last week to refuse to expand access to low-cost health care for tens of thousands of families emerging from a devastating public health crisis and turn down $1.6 billion in desperately needed federal funds to rebuild Wisconsin’s shattered economy.
“Wisconsin has essentially been handed a $1 billion dollar lottery ticket,” said Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz. “The only acceptable answer is to cash it by expanding BadgerCare and then invest it in our economic recovery.”
The most shocking thing about that irresponsible Republican action was the total absence of any public shock. Of course, Republican legislators opposed doing anything to improve health care or restore the economy under Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. State Republicans are determined to prevent Evers from succeeding at anything just as elected Republicans nationally according to Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are 100% committed to preventing Biden’s presidency from succeeding. So what if that hurts their own constituents?
GOP Says no to Jobs, Health?
Evers foolishly thought Republicans might care about funding more than 50 projects specifically aimed at creating jobs and saving lives in the small towns and rural areas they represent. You know, like $200 million for rural broadband, $100 million to repair local roads and bridges and $100 million to replace lead pipes poisoning drinking water.
“It’s breath-taking that after a year of working to prevent us from responding to COVID-19, Republicans would rather keep playing politics with our economic recovery than invest $1 billion into our state’s economy and support communities in their own districts,” Evers said.
It’s also the result of the corrupt Republican gerrymandering that has protected incumbents from removal from office for ignoring the interests of voters statewide. After the 2010 census, Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans packed Democratic voters into the fewest possible voting districts and scattered the rest of them into so many separate districts they were a permanent minority. The result was even when Democrats won every statewide election as they did in 2018 and 2020 and their legislative candidates received the most votes, Republicans still won majority control of both legislative chambers including a staggering two-thirds majority in the Assembly.
|
|
Violating Democracy
Election results that don’t reflect the intentions of Wisconsin voters clearly violate the fundamental principles of democracy. But in case you haven’t heard, Republicans are now the anti-democracy party. That was true in Wisconsin for the past decade even before Donald Trump, the defeated Republican president originally elected with Russia’s help, incited his violent supporters to terrorize Congress on Jan. 6 to try to stop certification of Biden’s election.
During Trump’s single term, McConnell rushed through the Republican Senate’s confirmation of more than 230 rightwing federal judges including three new Supreme Court justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, appointed by Ronald Reagan, was the last Republican appointed justice who was concerned about corrupt partisan gerrymandering sabotaging democracy. After Kennedy retired in 2018, Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined fellow Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch and other Republican-appointed justices in a 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts forbidding federal courts from interfering with partisan gerrymandering.
But federal courts still have to resolve conflicts over redistricting based on the new 2020 census between Evers and the Republican legislature, which appear inevitable. The assumption is any court-ordered redistricting will more fairly represent state voters than whatever the corrupt, unrepresentative state legislature might contrive.
Toxic Incompetence
Republicans rely on dishonest gerrymandering and voter suppression because they’re no longer a majority party that can fairly win many legitimate elections in a democracy. Trump’s offensive campaign of hateful racism surprised the experts by electing him in 2016, but four years of his toxic, incompetent presidency drove many decent Americans out of the Republican Party.
Democrats dealt with toxic racism in their party half a century ago. President Lyndon Johnson was an unlikely hero, but the former Texas Senator mentored by Southern racist politicians recognized the opportunity to make history by embracing civil rights and voting rights in the 1960s. He predicted Democrats might lose the South for a generation as a result. It actually took more than twice that long before Democrats won both Georgia Senate seats this January in a special election to control the Senate.
Texas Democrats became civil rights heroes again this weekend by walking out of the legislature to prevent passage of one of the worst voter suppression bills in the nation to make it easier for Republicans to overturn election results. Republicans don’t realize it yet, but Democrats did them a favor.
The sooner Republicans begin expelling the dangerous racists Trump attracted to their party, many of them willing to engage in violence to overturn elections won by Democrats, the sooner Republicans can begin rebuilding their party into a legitimate conservative American political party.
