Republican Conspiracy to Seize Power

Speaking one hundred years after the Republican Party ran its first presidential campaign, Dwight Eisenhower who worked to convert it into a modern party in the mid-20th century, encouraged party colleagues to develop “a certain kind of principle, or doctrine, or belief to fall back on” and warned that “If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.”

For decades Democrats and Republicans alike have used redistricting to build partisan advantage by designing districts that gave themselves outsized majorities in both federal and state legislatures. After the 2010 census Republicans used the latest computer software to turn their 2010 wave victory into “permanent” majorities all over the country. Now that even with the abuses of partisan redistricting they’re beginning to lose their control they’ve begun taking other power grabbing measures.

Today in Wisconsin and Michigan Republican state legislators, many of whom lost re-election campaigns last month, are now passing legislation in lame duck sessions that will take power from the incoming governor, secretary of state, and attorney general – all democrats – and put it in the hands of the state legislature which will still be controlled by Republicans, albeit by narrow margins.
Within days of the election Wisconsin Republicans hurriedly drafted and passed a bill that blocks incoming Governor Tony Evers’s ability to change state welfare policy and withdraw from a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — two things he campaigned on. It also limits the state’s early voting period, a move that would make it harder for Democrats to win future elections. Other suddenly proposed legislation would change the date of Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential primary in what is an obvious attempt to lower turnout for a separate state-supreme-court election scheduled for the same day.

In Michigan Republicans are working to shift the power to intervene in litigation from the governor’s and attorney general’s offices to the legislature, where Republicans maintain a majority. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer captured the governorship last month after Republican Rick Snyder ran the state for two terms. Democrats also won the offices of attorney general and secretary of state, and another lame-duck GOP proposal would move campaign-finance authority from the secretary of state to a six-person bipartisan commission.

Both Wisconsin and Michigan are following the playbook written by North Carolina Republicans after their 2016 loss of the governorship. Late in December 2016 North Carolina’s Republican Governor Pat McCrory called a special session and within 48 hours bills were passed that limited the incoming governor Roy Cooper’s ability to make key cabinet appointments without their approval, drastically cut the size of Cooper’s administration, and changed the Board of Elections so that Republicans would control it in election years. They also ensured lawsuits had to first go through the Republican-controlled appeals court, before the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court. Since some of those bills were fully fleshed out 40 page documents upon submission this was an organized ambush.

This is not how a healthy democracy works, lame duck sessions should be used to complete work on pending legislation and tie up loose ends. Unfortunately Dwight Eisenhower’s concerns regarding lack of principle have proven correct as Republicans around the country are indeed conspiring to seize power.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - December 14, 2018