One of the questions that nags at me these days is why the GOP seems so ready to give up on democracy. When did they decide that trying to win fairly based on better policies was no longer an option?
After reading Nancy MacLean’s book “Democracy in Chains,” I have a clearer picture. She points out that the Republican Party has long been a party supportive of the wealthy among its membership who object to sending their hard-earned dollars to Washington in the form of taxes to pay for programs they disagree with. Even the benign-sounding concept “common good” is seen as a “smokescreen” for the “takers” to exploit the “makers.” Since the majority tend to vote for the party favoring programs included under that concept, Republicans have been increasingly on the losing end of the popular vote.
So the attempted insurrection and subsequent voter-suppression laws are all about finding a route to power that’s more likely to be successful than appealing to the masses. All the talk of trying to prevent voter fraud is just noise. Who knew?
Frederick Longacre
Hockessin
