Republicans are "waging an asymmetrical guerilla war against democracy, blowing things up," in a desperate attempt to stop Democrats' "conventional war at the ballot box," warned author and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch in an article published on Monday.
Two key recent events — the GOP's expulsion of Tennessee lawmakers for joining a peaceful protest against gun violence, and a Trump-appointed judge blowing up FDA authority in order to restrict an abortion medication — should set off flashing alarm bells, Bunch wrote.
"Darth Vader’s Death Star had just one opening to exploit, but U.S. democracy has many — gerrymandering, the filibuster, the Electoral College, the undemocratic makeup of the U.S. Senate, statehouse power plays against home rule for Black or brown or progressive-minded communities, a take-no-prisoners hijacking of the judiciary," wrote Bunch. "The only shock of Thursday’s next-level expulsion of two duly-elected Black lawmakers in Nashville was the proof that — as Republican ideas become more unpopular — there is no bottom to how low this movement will go."
These actions, Bunch wrote, are proof that "the conservative movement doesn’t really believe in the liberties laid out in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It believes in the divine right of its preordained hierarchies — white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. — and will stop at nothing to maintain them. The story of America has been the fight for democracy against slavery, Jim Crow, pervasive sexism, mass incarceration, and more. Today, the forces of repression are running out of room, so they would rather win by fascism than lose elections."
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This comes as Democrats rack up victories at the ballot box driven by voters' rejection of reactionaries, from Trump's loss in 2020 to the GOP's massive underperformance in the 2022 midterms that saw them barely retake the House and lose ground in the Senate and state governments, and most recently a judicial election in Wisconsin that gave liberals a majority on the state Supreme Court.
It is young voters, concluded Bunch, who are driving this movement, and who are giving America a chance of defeating authoritarianism: "Their moral authority, and their rising power at the ballot box from Eau Claire to Memphis, is why a decrepit GOP is lashing out. History will surely remember what happened in Tennessee as an affront to democracy — and the last throes of a dying movement."
