Nationwide, Republicans test new tactics to undermine democracy
An ongoing attempt by Republican legislators in Idaho to defund the state’s attorney general offers yet more proof that the GOP’S leadership has become a danger to democracy and sane, effective governance that citizens rely upon.
In this case, the Republican extremists just across the Nevada border in Idaho are trying to knee-cap the AG, who’s a member of their party, for not supporting the Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning President Joe Biden’s election win.
Yes, you read that right. In reaction to the AG not going along with the junk lawsuit — one of several rational positions he has taken to legal matters on other extremist Republican issues — the Republican-controlled Legislature is working to severely undercut the office’s authority.
They’re doing this with a multipronged collection of bills, the main one of which would eliminate the attorney general’s role as the primary legal defender of state agencies and instead allow the government to defend itself with private attorneys. The proposal takes responsible administration of the law, which is accountable to the people, and opens it up to carpetbagging attorneys whose loyalty is to who pays them, not to the Constitution.
This would be a disturbing precedent. What’s next for the Republicans who don’t think one of their own elected leaders is prepared to lie for former President Donald Trump to subvert the will of the voters or, worse yet, to anyone who openly opposes Trump? Would they eliminate a secretary of state’s office and farm out elections to private-sector operators they could directly control? Would they turn the governor into a figurehead and gain direct control over state departments? Would they begin filing false prosecutions of political enemies of the kind we see in Russia?
If they can turn the attorney general into a cardboard cutout, where will they stop in their crippling perversions of our system of government?
Keep in mind, the Idaho attorney general, Lawrence Wasden, wasn’t even opposing the lawsuit. He merely declined to add Idaho onto the list of 17 Republican states supporting it. And in opting not to sign in, Wasden listed among his concerns not the total baselessness of the suit but his respect for states’ rights.
Whatever his reason, Wasden made a good call in not wasting his office’s time and the state’s money on the suit, which the courts treated as if it had been drafted by a second-grader.
But doing his duty and protecting the state didn’t matter to his fellow Republicans, not in this Mccarthyesque era of the party when only the most unquestionably loyal abettors of Trump are allowed to remain in good standing.
“What strikes me is that Wasden seems less partisan in his actions than what we see from other state attorneys general,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist, to the Associated Press. “It can be a challenge if you’re not perceived as a strong party player.”
True. Sadder yet, the situation in Idaho appears to involve much more than a Trump purity test. It stinks of Republican efforts in other states to subvert tried and true governmental processes, destroy the democratic process and gain single-party, minority control.
We’ve seen it in Republican-controlled legislatures that have undercut
Democratic governors’ emergency powers or limited the general scope of power for newly elected Democrats.
The assault also is evident in the phalanx of legislation in states nationwide to limit voter access in ways that particularly disempower minority voters. That includes in Nevada, where three such bills were proposed in this year’s legislative session.
Now, the Republicans in Idaho are going a step further by going after a bedrock of fair and accountable administration of the law, which opens even more avenues to sabotaging.
Don’t think this couldn’t happen in Nevada. Look at what happened here after the election, when former attorney general Adam Laxalt, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, sued Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske in an attempt to overturn the popular vote against Trump. Cegavske is also a Republican. Now, think of what might have occurred if Laxalt had won the 2018 election.
The object lesson here is that Nevadans need to be very, very choosy about the Republican candidates they support. Not all of them are extremists, of course, but the inescapable takeaway from stories like the one out of Idaho is that GOP leaders are increasingly not to be trusted in government. They’re in it only to seize it for themselves.
What’s next for the Republicans who don’t think one of their own elected leaders is prepared to lie for former President Donald Trump to subvert the will of the voters or, worse yet, to anyone who openly opposes Trump? Would they eliminate a secretary of state’s office and farm out elections to private-sector operators they could directly control?