Quote:In the wake of a midterm election where the Republicans lost 40 House seats, Republicans were willing to call perfectly legitimate election results into question simply because they didn’t like the outcome. President Trump spread wild conspiracy theories about “forged” ballots in the Florida Senate race and of undocumented immigrants voting en masse for Democrats in California House contests. We heard similar sentiments from establishment figures like Lindsey Graham, Paul Ryan, and Marco Rubio.

Some state Republicans have even decided to nullify the results of this year’s elections. Last Friday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed a bill that seizes key powers from Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers, who defeated Walker in November. Michigan Republicans are currently weighing a similar bill, and both are following in the footsteps of North Carolina Republicans, who passed a power-stripping bill after a Democratic victory in the 2016 governor’s race.

These acts go well beyond the normal democratic give and take, where parties battle over the rules of elections at the margins. They violate basic democratic principles, revealing the modern GOP to be a threat to the American political system itself..

Quote:In a May 19 article, Guardian columnist Nathan Robinson argues that Wisconsin is beginning to resemble a failed state, which he defines as “one that can no longer claim legitimacy or perform a government’s core function of protecting the people’s basic security.” The Wisconsin GOP, Robinson writes, is a minority party, but after years of extreme gerrymandering, it wields de facto dictatorial powers, enabling it to gut public-sector unions and advance the privileges of business interests and the wealthy.

The failed nature of Wisconsin governance, according to Robinson, was graphically displayed on May 13, when the conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ coronavirus “stay-at-home” orders. The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the state’s GOP-controlled assembly and senate. It allowed patrons to crowd into bars, restaurants, and other venues without any social-distancing restrictions whatsoever.

The people of Wisconsin, by and large, are no fools. Like people everywhere, they want a return to normalcy, but they are also concerned about recklessly reopening the economy. A Marquette University poll released on May 12 found that 69 percent of residents supported the governor’s policies, which were designed by the state’s top public-health officials. The policies were also backed by the ACLU, which saw them as vital for the protection of minority communities that have been devastated by COVID-19.

The net result, in Robinson’s view, is this: “The more that Wisconsin Republicans act to impose their will unilaterally without regard to the safety or will of the people, the less we should treat Wisconsin as a functional government.” But what about the country as a whole under the Trump presidency?

Quote:In late March, Georgia passed a restrictive new voting law that, in effect, permits the Republican state legislature to put partisan operatives in charge of disqualifying ballots in Democratic-leaning precincts. The law is one of at least eight proposals from GOP lawmakers in state legislatures around the country for increasing partisan influence over electoral administration — and one of more than 360 state bills that would curtail voting rights in one way or another. New political science research suggests this wave of attempts to restrict the franchise is not an anomaly: Republican control over state government is correlated with large and measurable declines in the health of a state’s democracy.

The paper, by University of Washington professor Jake Grumbach, constructs a quantitative measure of democratic health at the state level in the US. He looked at all 50 states between 2000 and 2018 to figure out why some states got more democratic over this period and others less. The conclusions were clear: The GOP is the problem. “Results suggest a minimal role for all factors except Republican control of state government, which dramatically reduces states’ democratic performance during this period,” he writes..

Quote:Journalist John Harwood had a piece in CNN Sunday reflecting on an essay published in 2012 that accurately predicted the coming of today's GOP. "Let's just say it: the Republicans are the problem" was written by Thomas Mann, who was at the time with the Brookings Institution, along with Norm Ornstein, who is still with the American Enterprise Institute. The Republicans, they said, had become "ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition." Sound familiar?

Quote:The essay described congressional extremists, their rejection of truth, a party turning into authoritarians or "an apocalyptic cult." It bore a striking headline:
"Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem." It didn't mention Marjorie Taylor Greene, the deadly January 6 insurrection or Donald Trump's Big Lie. In fact, the words "Donald Trump" did not appear at all.

Published in 2012, that Washington Post piece demonstrates more than the foresight of its political scientist authors, Tom Mann of the center-left Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the center-right American Enterprise Institute. It shows the disease within the Republican Party had spread long before Trump metastasized it.

Their conclusions -- that the GOP had become "ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition" -- did not gain wide acceptance then. Many journalists joined leading Republicans in dismissing them..

Quote:Paul Krugman @paulkrugman The American left asks why we can't be like Denmark, with universal health care, low child poverty, and high life satisfaction. The American right asks why we can't have a murderously repressive regime like Putin's Russia, or now Myanmar. OK. Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof Michael Flynn says the US should have the same kind of coup d'etat that Myanmar had. Remember: Myanmar's military is overturning elections, shooting protesters, torturing students, destroying the economy -- and it's fresh off a genocide of the Rohingya. twitter.com/MC_Hyperbole/s… twitter.com/NickKristof/status/139920108808392