NORMS FALL FROM D.C. TO RALEIGH
We can’t let the GOP win its war on democracy
Now that the War on Christmas has been won by a thrice-married philanderer who ran for president as an aspiring theocrat, the North Carolina GOP has decided it’s time to win the War on Democracy.
First, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and his allies spent weeks lodging useless election challenges before finally conceding to Democrat Roy Cooper. Then, after an emergency session called to aid flood victims last week, the GOP-led legislature resolved to respond to the real disaster — a duly elected Democratic governor.
Over the course of a few days in December, Cooper was stripped of many executive powers, the only powers he’ll likely be able to exercise given that Republicans hold supermajorities in both state houses.
Sounds like democracy in action, right? ‘UNCHARTED TERRITORY’ Voters obviously wanted to put a check on Democrats’ power by giving the GOP supermajorities — except they’re more like so-called supermajorities because the party’s 70% control of the state Senate and 74% in the state House came by winning 56% and 53% of the vote, respectively. In fact, a U.S. district court found recently that 28 House and Senate special elections must be held next year because the legislative districts are the result of an unconstitutional “racial gerrymander.”
Of course, North Carolina Republicans didn’t invent gerrymandering or rewriting rules to benefit their party. But they are taking it to extremes that we haven’t seen since before the civil rights movement with a contemptible display that borders on nullification.
“Democrats in no state have tried to neuter the governor’s authority after a Republican took office, not even in Illinois,” Stephen Wolf, a writer for Daily Kos
Elections, tells me. Bob Philips, executive director of the non-partisan Common Cause North Carolina, agrees with the assessment that “we’re in unprecedented, uncharted territory.”
And there’s no precedent for what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP Senate just pulled off by holding up a Supreme Court appointment for the longest stretch in U.S. history. Now a president who was easily re-elected by a margin of nearly 5 million votes won’t get to make that appointment. That privilege will go to a presidentelect who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.
“The glue that holds our republic together is in acceptance of norms of democratic behavior,” congressional scholar Norman Ornstein tweeted. “Trump, McConnell, N.C. Republicans are shattering them.”
When a firebomb destroyed a GOP office in Hillsborough, N.C., in mid- October, Democrats started a GoFundMe page that raised nearly $13,000 in fewer than 40 minutes to reopen the office. That urge comes not just from basic decency but also a fundamental respect for democracy. TEA PARTY MODEL That same respect is why the establishment of the Democratic Party didn’t join the doomed effort to persuade the Electoral College to reject President-elect Donald Trump. And it’s why President Obama refuses to be the first president to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.
Watching Democrats let this happen, you can argue, as Think
Progress did in a recent headline, that liberalism is not built for moments like these.
But conservatism is.
That’s why Democrats need to follow that model, say Jeremy Haile, Angel Padilla and Ezra Levin, former congressional staffers shaped by the rise of the Tea Party movement. Their crowdsourced guide, Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the
Trump Agenda, aims to compel the same sort of relentless opposition the right waged on Obama’s agenda. Absolute resistance seemed risky, but it has produced one of the most consequential victories in GOP history.
The “Just say NO!” approach was devised by powerful Republicans the night Obama was first sworn in. It was backed up by tens of millions of dollars from outside groups and free advertising from Fox News. Republicans were also blessed in their opponent: a constitutional law scholar devoted to working within the system. Most important, their leaders weren’t weighed down by the delusion that voters would reward them for trying to make Congress functional.
The GOP has proved that treating your opponents as illegitimate is a path to success.
Democracy is on fire. Democrats don’t want to fight fire with fire. But they’d better figure out a way to resist that doesn’t rely on the graciousness of their opponents or the wisdom of the American voter, before 80 years of progress is burned to the ground.