The Real Reason Why Republicans Keep Saying "We're a Republic, Not a Democracy"

[marmar]

The Real Reason Why Republicans Keep Saying “We’re a Republic, Not a Democracy”
The author of Democracy May Not Exist on a sinister new talking point.

By JOSHUA KEATING


(Slate) The timeworn phrase “we’re a republic, not a democracy,” once confined to campus political debates and the nerdier corners of the political internet, has been bubbling up to mainstream politics for some time now. But it was still jarring, during last week’s vice presidential debate, when Sen. Mike Lee of Utah tweeted, simply, “We’re not a democracy.” He later followed up, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”

Lee’s comment triggered an uproar on social media, and other conservatives took up the line. During the first day of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana made the point that America is not a “pure democracy” and quoted newspaper columnist James Gill quipping that “we don’t all put on a clean toga and rush down to the forum to vote in person on every issue.”

An even more extreme position was staked out, a few days before Lee, by Loren Culp, the long-shot Republican candidate for governor of Washington, who said in a recent interview that “democracy is mob rule” and that “famous Chinese leaders like Mao Zedong and Mikhail Gorbachev loved democracy because democracy is a step toward socialism, which is a step towards communism.”

The critique that too much democracy will inevitably lead to mob rule and tyranny is as old as Plato—hence the togas—and these men are right that it was very much on the minds of America’s founders. But for anyone who lived through the era of George W. Bush and democracy promotion it’s jarring to hear Republican candidates and politicians speak about democracy with such disdain. And it certainly seems significant that the democracy critique is picking up steam ahead of an election that could once again hinge on the difference between the Electoral College and the popular vote, as the president rails against “ballots” and refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power.

....(snip)....

Do you think there’s a reason why it’s bubbling up into high-level politics now?

I think you’re seeing a real shift in conservative rhetoric because they are giving up on winning majorities. If you go back 50 years, books like The Emerging Republican Majority, and even around the period of George Bush, there was this idea, “OK, well, if Republicans want to keep winning majorities, we need to appeal more to the conservative Latino vote.” And the party has just gone in the opposite direction of that. It’s figuring out how to maintain dominance with a minority of support. And so, in that sense, I think the rhetoric is really telling. It’s a way of rationalizing the further entrenchment of minority rule. ..........(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/10/republic-democracy-mike-lee-astra-taylor.html

[lagomorph777]

1. We need to drive these cockroaches back under the furniture where they belong.

[Progressive dog]

2. Republics that are not also representative democracies

are almost always despotic. That is what the Trumpists want.

[magicarpet]

3. Furniture,... I thought they climbed out of the toilets and raw sewage cesspools,..

... like rats who reside in the large raw sewage tubes below the streets and within the heavy steel man hole covers.

Look.. more Fascist rats and cockroaches trying to exits the raw sewage tanks....

[GeorgeGist]

4. From the looks of things ...

they're FASCISTS.

[Statistical]

5. Exactly. Republicans have a losing coalition AND refuse to change but want to remain in power.

They 'could' moderate themselves. They 'could' make inroads to women and minorities. They don't want to they simply want absolute rule by the minority power.

[Aristus]

6. Comparing us to Republican Rome was a really bad democracy analogy.

Yeah, Roman citizens got to vote. But if they didn't own any property, they were routed into what were called "urban voting tribes"; there were only two, as opposed to a dozen or so "rural voting tribes" consisting of property owners, whether they lived in rural areas or not.

The majority was always overruled by the minority for just this reason. It was a deliberate choice to ensure that the great mass of the population would have almost no say in government at all.


Also, it's not like any Titus, Didius, or Lucius could declare himself a candidate and run for office. A man had to already be a member of the Senate before he was allowed to run for any of the civic magistracies. And you could only be appointed (not elected) to the Senate if you earned an income of a million or more a year, all from the ownership of land.

So when the Roman people went to vote, it was for candidates they played no part in choosing.

[genxlib]

7. It is simply another form of privilege

When an inequity seems acceptable simply because it benefits you.

I call it Right Privilege

I would have more sympathy for the argument if they were honorable about the power structure they claim to uphold. But voter suppression, gerrymandering and dark money show them to be anti-democratic even within the system that they describe. So fuck em.

[Fullduplexxx]

8. It's a democratic republic