Is Democracy Here for the Party?

Part 3: Republicans: Ineffective Winners, Delusional Losers

Unlike the Democrat Party, today’s Republican Party embodies two different problems that result from democratic victories and defeats: the party is ineffective at enacting its agenda when it wins and cedes far too much when it loses. 

There is a general consensus that people elect members of the House and Senate to represent popular opinions and interests, and we tend to judge representatives on their ability to stand for those whom they represent and rely upon for re-election. I would say that most of the Republican Party has failed to uphold this essential aspect of representative democracy. 

One of the most glaring failures of the Republican Party is their inability to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” After the 2010 midterm election in which the Tea Party re-infused conservatism into the GOP, Republican leadership promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with a market-based, small government approach to health care. It’s been over a decade, and in that timeframe, the Republicans have held both chambers of Congress more than once and occupied the White House for four years. And we still have the ACA. To be fair, the House has passed bills to repeal the ACA, and the Senate did once, during Obama’s presidency. Unsurprisingly, Obama vetoed the bill. But why couldn’t the GOP get their act together when it controlled the House, Senate, and White House during the first half of President Trump’s term? By then they should have known which parts of the bill worked and were popular so they could preserve those parts of the ACA. 

The GOP’s inability to grapple with the big tech censorship problem is another ridiculous example of the party’s ineptitude. Apparently, Republicans can’t seem to reconcile being the party of free enterprise and the party of free speech even when conservative politicians, pundits, and citizens are the majority of those being censored and banned on social media. Just because I support capitalism doesn’t mean that I also believe businesses are allowed to violate citizens’ rights. And big tech companies are doing just that. Not only are they tracking us, selling our information, and invading our privacy without sufficient notification (those legalese terms of service no one reads shouldn’t count as sufficient notification), they are also deciding who can post and what can be posted on social media platforms. 

Now the several problems with the tyranny of big tech is a topic for another post. The point I am making here is that the Republican Party is failing not only to protect the rights of its citizens but also represent the millions of Republican voters who have been calling on the party to deal with these problems with big tech for years. What makes this worse is that politicized control over social media has dire democratic consequences on our public discourse and election outcomes.

How else has the Republican Party managed to waste its electoral victories? I’m sure you can think of many more examples, like the party’s failure to secure the border, reform the immigration system, education reform, etc. And most of the recent “Republican” victories can be attributed to Trump and his executive orders, and he was a one-term president whom much of the Republican establishment hated. Regardless of what you think of either party their policy proposals, when the Democrats win they are impressively effective at enacting their agenda, a stark contrast to the Republicans. 

The reason this matters is not because I personally want every Republican policy to become law because I don’t. This matters because democratic republics rely on representation, and the voters who elect Republicans to Congress do so because they believe their ideas and policy preferences are going to be represented. What is more, when enough Republicans are elected and the party controls one or both chambers of Congress, those voters also hope that their policy preferences become the law of the land. The Republican Party has not only done a lackluster job at representing the citizens that vote for it, but has also hung them out to dry on issues like big tech censorship. 

Democracy requires at least two parties that are competitive, offer meaningful alternatives, enact the policies that the majority of voters desire (with some caveats like the policy’s constitutionality and consequences), abide by the rule of law, and engage in meaningful deliberation and debate. I would say we have a bipartisan problem on all these fronts, and ineffectual Republican winners are certainly making it worse. 

Not only are a majority of Republican senators and representatives ineffective at governance after an electoral victory, they are also delusional losers. The best example of this is their reaction to the 2020 presidential election. Many in the GOP raised doubts about the validity of the 2020 presidential election and subsequent special election in Georgia, but they didn’t pursue it. In fact, they dropped these allegations for fear of the political backlash, and presumably because some like Mitch McConnell wanted to pave the way for bipartisan cooperation. 

How’s that working for you, Mitch? And by the way, good laws and principled politicians are far more valuable than whether or not a bill had bipartisan support. When did blind bipartisanship become such a sacrosanct political value, anyways?

So, these same Republicans who cried foul during the election tell their base not to worry and that they will win the next election. How likely is that if the deep-seeded problems they claim plague the electoral system are true? There were two elections with irregularities that must be thoroughly invested, at the very least. It seems like the Republicans should adopt the mantra, “Shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me if you fool me twice.” 

In short, the Republican Party failed to defend the free and fair elections principle of democracy. Even if they were wrong, they believed they’re right and have a duty to pursue these charges and investigate these odd and incredibly unlikely election results if nothing else than to prove these elections were legitimate to restore the American people’s trust in our electoral system. 

And finally, when Democrats hit below the belt, most Republicans appear as if they’re about to say, “Please, sir, can I have some more?” When Republicans are falsely accused of racism, sexism, or say something that is true but politically incorrect, they get raked over the coals for it. And most of them do nothing to combat this political bullying that undermines our civil political discourse. A spineless elephant is a rare thing to behold, outside of Washington, D.C., anyways. 

Photo: 

"Republican Elephant & Democratic Donkey - 3D Icons" byDonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0

https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/20f6bbc2-bf1b-41a4-8bd7-055548cd551b