I suppose I should lay out the history, starting with how the Republicans of North Carolina started stripping powers from the governorship once a Democrat was elected to the office, moving on to Wisconsin and Michigan: Voters participate in an election to hand certain powers to the winner, but then the losers show contempt for the integrity of our democratic process and attempt to steal back the powers that they lost.
But really what matters is the overall point, which is being underscored now by the rumblings out of Kentucky that the Republicans there are contemplating using unsubstantiated charges — what does today’s Republican Party care about what’s TRUE? — and the raw power of their control of the state legislature, to nullify an election that (to their embarrassment) the voters of their state gave to their opponents.
(For accounts of those ugly rumblings out of Kentucky, see here and here.)
A few days ago, I wrote that “Dems Should Be Pounding the Rs for Their Indefensible Pursuit of the Whistleblower.” I began that piece with three general propositions:
The political darkness afflicting America may be focused right now on Donald Trump, but he is also an expression of what’s gone wrong in the Republican Party in these times over the past generation. It is therefore not only Donald Trump who should be the target of the Democrats’ ongoing effort to restore basic decency and respect for our institutions to the nation, but also this “Trump Party.” If the Dems were to get rid of Trump, but leave this morally bankrupt Republican Party in a strong position to continue their destructive impact on our politics, that would represent a highly regrettable missed opportunity. The history of the past generation has been filled with such missed opportunities, as the Democrats have almost continually treated the Republicans in Congress [but not only in Congress] with more courtesy and less outrage than the Republican conduct has warranted.
The pattern of Republican behavior showing contempt for America’s most basic democratic values and institutions is crystal clear, and should be vociferously called out in a spirit of righteous outrage. Any effort from the Republicans of Kentucky to nullify the gubernatorial election that they lost — a close one, but from all evidence available thus far, fair and square — should be turned into a club to beat them.
Republicans’ disgraceful behavior has too often, over the past generation, been rewarded with power. The job of the Democrats is to make sure that henceforth it reliably entails a heavy political price.