The GOP Would Rather Cheat Than Modify Its Agenda

When a political party finds most voters opposed to its agenda, it has two ways to legitimately respond. It can convince those voters they are wrong  or it can modify its agenda. The Republican Party finds itself in that dilemma. But they have chosen a third way - an undemocratic one.

Jamelle Bouie explains the GOP way in this part of his New York Times article:

Republicans have made “democracy” a dirty word. And they seem to have given up on persuasion in favor of trying to win power through the brute-force exploitation of the political system. Why win over voters when you can gerrymander your party into a permanent legislative majority? Why try to persuade voters to reject a referendum you disagree with when you can try instead to change the rules and kill the referendum before it can get on the ballot? Why aim to win a broad national majority when you can win — or try to snatch — a narrow victory in the swing states?

The defining attribute of the modern Republican Party, beyond its devotion to Donald Trump, is a profound lack of confidence in its ability to compete for a majority of the country at large married to an inability to see outside its ideological cocoon. Republicans both reject the idea that voters could have a legitimate dispute with their views and do not seem to believe that they could persuade anyone who disagrees. And so they decide that the public in question has been indoctrinated or brainwashed or led astray, in one way or another, from the supposedly pure light of the Republican Party.

But the truth is so much simpler. Republicans have tied themselves to the far extremes of the conservative movement — and most voters just don’t like it.