The results of this week’s off-year elections in various states throughout the country have been fodder for much political analysis in the mainstream media, and the overwhelming consensus among Establishment pundits is that Republicans are losing nationwide primarily because of their defense of the unborn.
An earlier piece here at The New American refuted that new abortion narrative. After all, despite the media’s insistence, is it really logical that only a few years after Republicans achieved a trifecta of federal government control (White House, House of Representatives, and Senate) based on the promise that they would appoint Supreme Court justices who would reverse Roe v. Wade, the nation is suddenly overwhelmingly in favor of abortion?
Clearly, like so many spun by the mainstream media, this is another false narrative being pushed with the aim of demoralizing the life movement and persuading conservatives and Republicans into believing that they have to capitulate on the abortion issue to remain electorally viable.
Given that it’s a solid heuristic that the truth is often the opposite of what the mainstream media wants you to believe, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that defending children in the womb remains popular across the country.
Furthermore, the notion that the election results clearly show some sort of blue wave is spurious. Those who advance this theory point to the gubernatorial race in Kentucky, for example. Yet what many pundits neglect is the fact that the Democrat who won, Andy Beshear, was the incumbent governor, and voters normally reward incumbents with a second term so long as they haven’t messed up too much — even when the incumbent’s party affiliation goes against the grain of the electorate.
For instance, Louisiana is a Republican state but has had Democrat John Bel Edwards as governor since he was elected in 2015. Despite the state’s Republican trend, Edwards won reelection in 2019. But it was not a sign of a Democratic trend, merely a case of voters giving the sitting officeholder the incumbent advantage. Once Edwards termed out this year, a Republican, Jeff Landry, was elected.
Ken Blackwell, current chair of the Conservative Action Project, former mayor of Cincinnati, and former Ohio treasurer and secretary of state, made this point in assessing the Kentucky governor’s race. He told Politico:
Kentucky teaches us three things. First, it was a status quo election in that state. Reelections are a referendum on the incumbent, and in his response to the tornado, etc., Andy Beshear did enough competent casework for his constituents that enough swing voters decided the incumbent’s performance did not require replacing him. Second, the other incumbent statewide official is a Republican who won with a 21-point margin, and a Republican succeeded Daniel Cameron as attorney general by a 16-point margin, so this is no leftward shift favoring Democrats. One month ago Beshear was +16 in the polls, so Cameron closed strong to close the gap to just four points. Kentucky was about as strong as the GOP could do.
What the recent elections (particularly the victory of the Ohio ballot initiative by which voters approved the enshrining of abortion rights in the state’s constitution) really prove is the problem with democracy.
The United States, of course, contrary to what the Establishment constantly says, was not founded as a democracy, but as a republic. The Founders and the Framers of the U.S. Constitution were distrustful of democracy — of mere majority rule — having studied the way in which ancient democracies tended to devolve into tyranny, including the dissolution of property rights and the erosion of public morality.
The Framers’ distrust of mere majority rule is why they created a system with so many layers of checks on the popular will. The president was not directly elected by the people; neither were senators or Supreme Court justices. There was no universal suffrage — many states had property requirements and religious tests in order for a man to be able to vote, and the Constitution did not forbid these practices.
These ballot initiatives, by which voters are able to change their constitutions while bypassing their respective state legislatures, are the main mechanism being used to advance abortion in the post-Roe era. And they have also been used to successfully enact leftist policies even in red states where such programs would never make it through the legislature.
In Florida, for example, medical marijuana and the $15 minimum wage would never have been passed by the Republican majorities in the state Legislature or signed by the Republican governor. But both became law thanks to constitutional amendments approved directly by voters on the ballot.
Ballot initiatives are far too susceptible to manipulation in the sense that the Left arranges for them to be phrased with misleading language, even going so far as to use terms such as “freedom” and “families” to make abortion and other leftist issues appealing to Republican voters. They play to a lack of information and to voters’ short-term sensibilities.
This unfiltered majoritarianism is precisely what the Framers wanted to prevent. We are now reaping the fruits of democracy in America. A return to a constitutional republic is needed to stem the social decay.
