Democrats’ dangerous new rhetorical attack against the Right has dire implications for the Republic and shows they’re playing for keeps. If conservatives don’t wake up and act, a dark future awaits.
The new narrative being pushed by Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media is that American “democracy” is on the brink of extinction because the Republican party has become a party of “authoritarianism.”
In other words, according to the Left, today’s conservatives want to destroy representative government and replace it with an authoritarian regime. The implication is that the only way to stop Republicans from achieving their tyrannical aims is to suppress them completely: Jail them, bar them from participating in the political process, and censor their views totally on all platforms of communication.
That’s what makes the rhetoric so dangerous.
In just one example of this narrative, Fox News’ Juan Williams wrote at The Hill that “American democracy is in peril.”
Writes Williams:
Eighty-six percent of registered Republican voters would “probably” or “definitely” vote for former President Trump in 2024, according to a December poll by Echelon Insights.
What are they voting for — the end of democracy?
Are they so angry at modern America that they are willing to vote for a demagogue who tried to overturn a presidential election?
Williams went on to call the modern GOP a “cult based on kowtowing to Trump’s delusion [that the election was stolen].” He went on to suggest that the country is close to a civil war.
For Williams, the solution is for the House’s Democrat-led January 6 Committee to “pull the covers off all the lies around Jan. 6, including Trump’s lies, and let the world see the truth.”
Other writers have been more direct in using the “a-word” — authoritarianism.
A Vox article titled “Call it Authoritarianism” claims Republicans’ election reform efforts are about rigging elections in their favor to create a one-party system similar to Venezuela’s.
An op-ed at the Courier-Journal states “Two Kentucky historians agree the GOP is steering the US straight toward authoritarianism.”
Fair Planet published “Study: US Republican Party is Embracing Authoritarianism,” in which the authors say the GOP is guilty of a “total disregard of democratic norms,” including of accepting political violence.
Over at The Bulwark, Benjamin Parker writes of “The GOP’s Telltale Signs of Authoritarianism.”
Making the case that the GOP has become a cult of Trump, Parker writes, “The Republican party is an authoritarian party, not just in its unabashed hostility to democracy and the rule of law, but also in its internal organization. It exhibits many of the classic signs of authoritarianism, with many of the attendant strengths and vulnerabilities.”
“Republican authoritarianism is here to stay,” declares Brian Klaas at The Washington Post.
Klaas laments:
For the past decade, I’ve studied the rise of authoritarianism and the breakdown of democracy around the world. Traveling from Madagascar to Thailand and Belarus to Zambia, I’ve tried to understand how despotic politicians and authoritarian political parties systematically destroy democracy. And based on that research, I have some bad news: The party of Reagan and Romney is long dead. The party of Trump is here to stay.
Fellow Washington Post contributor Jennifer Rubin puts the blame at the feet of Republican voters. In her article, “The truth about many in the GOP base: They prefer authoritarianism to democracy,” she writes:
“The most authoritarian-inclined Americans tend to be over age 45, live in rural areas and don’t have a college degree. This is the profile of the GOP base, not coincidentally.”
Rubin argues that the “right’s descent into authoritarianism to a large degree is religiously-based,” and goes on to contend that “If a significant faction of the Republican Party adheres to Christian nationalism rather than the democratic civic religion (equality, the rule of law and the aspiration to perfect the American experiment), the rest of us cannot embrace them as good-faith partners in democracy.”
“As disturbing as it may seem, today’s GOP cannot be entrusted with power and cannot play the role of the ‘loyal opposition’ if it continues to operate outside the democratic compact,” she concludes.
That’s what it comes down to for the Left: If Republicans have descended into authoritarianism, as they claim, then the answer, in their view, is to completely block them from engaging in the political system.
Ironically, by so doing, they’re proving themselves to be the true totalitarians who wish to completely remove the opposition from governance in order to clear the way for total, one-party rule.
Between the January 6 Committee, the arrests of Capitol protesters, the disbarring of pro-Trump lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, and the censorship of elected Republicans such as Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Left has already demonstrated its full commitment to authoritarianism.
If Republicans don’t accept that good-natured backyard barbecue politics is over — that this is a fight for survival — then the Republic’s fate is sealed.
