Why has the American Republican party become an enemy of democracy?

A response

This Saturday, a fellow blogger posed this question to his readership but, because I don’t have a paid subscription with his blog, I need to post my response here. I don’t wish to offend anyone, so I will be agreeing with everything and I will be disagreeing with everything, and, that way, everyone ought to be happy with at least some part of what follows.

The Republican party is currently selecting a candidate to stand for the presidency in an election that will be held on 5 November (the same day that Britain will set off fireworks to celebrate the crushing of an undemocratic attempt by democrats, who wanted equal treatment of Catholics and Protestants, to blow up England’s undemocratic parliament and king).

Putting up a candidate in an election is part of the democratic system. Therefore, selecting a candidate for an election should not constitute enmity towards democracy.

But, if one takes the view that the Republican party is selecting the wrong candidate for the presidency, one who, despite participating in the democratic process, is himself deemed an undemocratic person (whatever that is), then that itself could be viewed as constituting an undemocratic thing. After all, a political party can select the candidate it wishes. It cannot be that the Democratic party considers that candidates for the Republican party require the approval of the Democratic party. That would not be democratic.

The process is this: candidates stand for election and then the populace decides which one they want to govern them. If the populace choose the wrong candidate, and this has been known to happen in past elections in some places, and that wrongness was manifested prior to the election, then it is to be assumed that the populace wanted that wrongness. If the wrongness manifests itself after the election, then there is an impeachment procedure. The fact that the US devolves to the people the job of electing a president and devolves to the members of Congress the job of impeaching a president is unfortunate, but there you are. No democracy is perfect.

One would like to think that the Democratic party’s candidate would be approved by the Republican party, if the Democratic party believes that the Republican candidate needs to be approved by it. There is very little in the way of approval of Mr Biden coming from Republican quarters. Just as little as there is approval of Mr Trump and/or Mrs Haley from Democratic quarters.

Normally, this kind of sparring should focus on matters of policy and track record. But it is surprising to find that the main discussion this year circles around neither, but rather around whether one or the other party, or their candidates, is or is not democratic and the mere fact of their participating in an election process in which they, and any other candidate (like Mr Ross) must adhere to certain rules (and manifestly have done so to date, otherwise the due processes of law would have corrected matters), is prima facie evidence of their being democratic. Each as much as the other.

Mr Nixon, in his time, coined the infamous phrase If the president does it, it’s not illegal and it can be that, in that, he was right. The question of the legality or otherwise of things that a US president does is neither here nor there. It is trite to say that all presidents do things that are illegal but for the fact that they are done by the president. Mr Nixon was indeed right.

The question is rather the sustainability and tolerability of what the president does, and that will always be the test. For democracy is an illusion, since it has never proved its veracity, either in terms of the election process or in terms of the processes of government: it is a means by which the undemocratic seek to exercise their ill-gotten influence whilst giving a superficial impression of having the people’s best interests at heart. The test of democracy therefore is not the democratic process but the extent to which the populace is prepared to tolerate the unsustainability of their rulers’ laws and decisions.

Their tolerance is communicated via their Congresspeople in procedures such as impeachment and via the Electoral College in procedures such as elections. They can manifest their intolerance in one other, democratic manner: their voice. They can write, they can protest and they can clamour. But these are means that are clamped down upon by supposedly democratic institutions. Those who write their views in fora such as X or Facebook find their views smothered. Those who wish to take to the streets, such as to support particular political movements, find themselves the object of police repression. Even those who wish to ask for alms may be gunned down in the street in some democratic jurisdictions. Those who wish to join together to improve their employment conditions find themselves manipulated against, again, under the rules of democracy. Those who want a fair wage must skimp so that the wealthy can profit, all in a democratic environment.

When the machinery of democracy is vaunted as being a holy grail despite the undemocratic manner in which it operates in terms of how the populace can vote, the oversight they have of their representatives, the manner in which they can make their voice heard, the rights they have vis-à-vis those who police them, this all tends to undermine, not democracy, but the faith that the people place in that which is labelled as democracy. And, when that is undermined, when reliance on the machinery of democracy has crumbled to the point at which fighting for its survival is viewed as futile, it is not unnatural that the populace, or significant parts thereof, would abandon any call to assemble under its banner.

The Democrats might vaunt the fact that they treat Blacks equally along with whites. But they don’t. Or the fact that they want to treat gays equally along with straights. But they don’t. Or that they want to treat Jews equally along with Muslims. But they don’t. Or that they want to treat women equally along with men. But they don’t. Or that they want to treat workers equally along with employers. But they don’t. The Democrats do not want to treat any one of these groups equally along with any one of the rest. And nor do the Republicans.

If you want to save democracy, whoever you are, you first need to create a democracy worthy of the name.