Tag Archives: GOP

The Arrogance Of Power

As Indiana’s election looms, the enduring truth of one of Jennifer McCormick’s talking points is hard to miss: it’s time for a change.

Indiana has been ruled by Republicans for over twenty years. We’ve had Republican Governors and a Republican legislature–and for the past several years, a Republican super-majority in that legislature. For any political party, a persistent lack of balance–and thanks to gerrymandering, a perceived lack of any real competition–leads to corruption. (“Power corrupts” is as old and hoary an adage as “it’s time for a change.)

The problem with extended one-party rule isn’t simply that extremists can pass rules and push through legislation without considering contending viewpoints or public opinion–it’s that those exercising power come to believe that they can do anything they want, legal or not, without worrying about the consequences. Two recent stories–one from the Indiana Citizen and one from The Capitol Chronicle–are directly on point.

The Indiana Citizen reports on the continuing corruption of the Attorney General’s office headed by Todd Rokita. A Marion County Superior Court has sanctioned two state agencies and the lawyers from the Indiana Attorney General’s Office who represented them, detailing ongoing misconduct and ordering them to pay nearly $375,000. While the agencies involved are certainly not blameless, the responsibility for complying with court orders and responding truthfully to questions from the court and other litigants rests squarely on the shoulders of the lawyers representing them. 

According to the court, 

Respondents and their counsel committed multiple types of unacceptable misconduct on numerous occasions. They acted in an unreasonable manner with disregard for Petitioners, the Court and the orderly process of justice,” Joven wrote in the order granting petition for attorney fees and costs. “Further, Respondents failed to explain why the repeated acts of misconduct occurred and went uncured, failed to accept responsibility for the misconduct, failed to express remorse, and failed to identify steps that have been taken to prevent such unacceptable misconduct from occurring in the future.”

Worse, this evidently wasn’t the first time these lawyers had been sanctioned. Only a year before this case was filed, “the Indiana Department of Correction, its counsel from the attorney general’s office and the attorney general’s office itself were sanctioned in another case for making false representations to the federal judge, making false discovery responses and submitting a brief that contained false information.” In other words, despite that previous ruling, lawyers from the AG’s office persisted in conduct that violated their ethical and legal obligations.

Courts have also smacked down Todd Rokita personally. He hasn’t listened either.

Then there’s the case against Jamie Noel, the southern Indiana political heavyweight who who pleaded guilty earlier this month to 27 felonies. Noel’s corruption, and his cozy ties to numerous state Republicans, have been the subject of considerable reporting, but The Capital Chronicle has focused on the effects of that corruption.

When a life is on the line in the back of an ambulance, first responders are supposed to have the best tools available to give every patient a fighting chance, said former paramedic Crystal Blevins. But for many who worked at New Chapel EMS — the southern Indiana emergency service provider previously ran by now-convicted former Clark County Sheriff Jamey Noel — “the equipment and the medicine, a lot of the time, wasn’t there.”

“There was this lie being presented to the public about what New Chapel was giving — they weren’t fulfilling that promise. Jamey ran the service out of greed … telling us there weren’t funds for what we needed, and then we came to find out the money was there all along,” Blevins told the Indiana Capital Chronicle. …

Court documents indicate that Noel stole more than half of the taxpayer dollars provided to New Chapel by Clark and Floyd counties. In his last four years as leader, he pocketed at least half a million dollars in wages and spent $2 million more on vacations, clothing, Rolex watches, child support payments, his daughter’s college tuition and more, according to state auditors.

Noel served as the Clark County sheriff from 2015 until the end of 2022. He was also the Republican Party chair for both Clark County and Indiana’s 9th Congressional District. That made him the gatekeeper for southern Indiana’s Republican political hopefuls for the last decade.

Noel and Rokita are examples of the hubris that enables corruption. When a political party uses its legislative power to gerrymander the electorate and ensure its continuation of political control, that cronyism invites abuse by greedy and self-interested individuals who are confident that they are beyond the reach of angry constituents.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is definitely time for a change. 

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Why Democracy Is At Risk

The punditry keeps telling us that democracy is at risk. There’s a reason why that is.

Yes, Donald J. Trump (aka “the former guy”) poses an existential risk to American democracy. But let’s be honest– crazy Donald and Project 2025 are only threats because of the actual, underlying reason for the erosion of our democratic processes: the systemic distortions that continue to promote minority rule.

I have used this platform to pontificate about several of those distortions, from the Electoral College (hugely undemocratic) to the current form of the filibuster (significantly undemocratic), but especially (and yes, repeatedly) gerrymandering.

In one of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent Letters from an American, she explained more eloquently than I have the degree to which partisan redistricting–aka gerrymandering–mutes the voice of the electorate. As a result, I’m quoting her explanation at length.

The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in this election is stark, and it reflects a systemic problem that has been growing in the U.S. since the 1980s.

Democracy depends on at least two healthy political parties that can compete for voters on a level playing field. Although the men who wrote the Constitution hated the idea of political parties, they quickly figured out that parties tie voters to the mechanics of Congress and the presidency.

And they do far more than that. Before political thinkers legitimized the idea of political opposition to the king, disagreeing with the person in charge usually led to execution or banishment for treason. Parties allowed for the idea of loyal and legitimate opposition, which in turn allowed for the peaceful transition of power. That peaceful exchange enabled the people to choose their leaders and leaders to relinquish power safely. Parties also create a system for criticizing people in power, which helps to weed out corrupt or unfit leaders.

But those benefits of a party system depend on a level political playing field for everyone, so that a party must constantly compete for voters by testing which policies are most popular and getting rid of the corrupt or unstable leaders voters would reject.

In the 1980s, radical Republican leaders set out to dismantle the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights. But that system was popular, and to overcome the majority who favored it, they began to tip the political playing field in their direction…. By the 1990s, extremists in the party were taking power by purging traditional Republicans from it.

And yet, voters still elected Democrats, and after they put President Barack Obama into the White House in 2008, the Republican State Leadership Committee in 2010 launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project. The plan was to take over state legislatures so Republicans would control the new district maps drawn after the 2010 census, especially in swing states like Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. It worked, and Republican legislatures in those states and elsewhere carved up state maps into dramatically gerrymandered districts.

In those districts, the Republican candidates were virtually guaranteed election, so they focused not on attracting voters with popular policies but on amplifying increasingly extreme talking points to excite the party’s base. That drove the party farther and farther to the right. By 2012, political scientists Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein warned that the Republican Party had “become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

At the same time, the skewed playing field meant that candidates who were corrupt or bonkers did not get removed from the political mix after opponents pounced on their misdeeds and misstatements, as they would have been in a healthy system.

There is much more, and I encourage you to click through and read Richardson’s letter in its entirety–or, for that matter, if you are not now a subscriber, to become one. As a historian, she provides an illuminating historical context to the problems we face.

One of those problems is that, in a democracy, many voters–perhaps most—fail to recognize the immense importance of the systems within which We the People operate. Only when those systems operate to facilitate fair play and to provide a level playing field are the people we elect incentivized to heed the will of their constituents.

Richardson says there are two possible outcomes to today’s corrupted system: the election of Republicans who will follow the Project 2025 playbook, or a voters’ revolt sufficient to dislodge its beneficiaries and prompt reform of the cult that has replaced the GOP.

In November, we’ll know which of those outcomes we’ve chosen.

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Connecting The Dots

A few evenings ago, I introduced a Zoom meeting sponsored by ReCenter Indiana. It was focused upon the very negative effects of our legislative super-majority. Democrats have identified four districts in Indiana that–should they all go Blue in November–would reduce the current super-majority to a simple majority. My job was to begin the session with an explanation of how a legislative super-majority advances extremism and stifles democratic deliberation.

Here are those introductory remarks.

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Let me begin this discussion by connecting some dots. Hoosier voters need to understand how partisan redistricting—usually referred to as gerrymandering–has given Indiana its legislative super-majority, and how that super-majority has given us increasingly extreme legislation: a virtually-complete abortion ban, education vouchers that are starving our public schools, gun laws that allow anyone who can fog a mirror to possess a lethal weapon– basically, a focus on culture war at the expense of attention to actual governance.

It’s a vicious circle, because in Indiana, the GOP’s legislative super-majority also allows the party to continue the extreme gerrymandering that has made Indiana one of the five most gerrymandered states in the country.

Gerrymandering has all sorts of undemocratic consequences, one of which is voter suppression. In districts perceived as “safe,” people who favor the “loser” party tend to stay home. That’s one reason why Indiana ranks 50th among the states in turnout. (Interestingly, due to Indiana’s population shifts, a number of those theoretically “safe” districts wouldn’t currently be safe if discouraged folks came out and voted. Those demographic shifts are one of the reasons there’s a chance this year to break the current GOP supermajority.)

Indiana is an excellent example of how the gerrymandering that leads to legislative super-majorities has a profound and very negative impact on policy.

We know that primaries attract the most ideologically extreme voters in either party. When the primary is, in effect, the general election, Republican incumbents protect their right flank, Democrats their left. In Indiana, which has been gerrymandered to produce more Republican districts, that reality has steadily moved us farther and farther Right. Today’s “culture warriors” win office in order to focus on issues like banning abortion, waging war on trans children, and removing common-sense restrictions on gun ownership. And it’s getting worse–there are indications that during the next session we’ll see the introduction of anti-vaccine measures that—if passed–would threaten public health. (For reasons I fail to understand, opposition to vaccination has become a preoccupation of what I’ll call the “Micah Beckwith wing” of the GOP.)

These are the pet issues of extremists, rather than the issues that most Hoosiers care about and that we traditionally consider governmental: roads and bridges and other infrastructure, crime and punishment, economic development.

Thanks to the gerrymandering that has given Republicans a super-majority, these extremist legislators face virtually no barriers to enacting measures that research tells us are deeply unpopular with most Hoosiers. Members of a super-majority don’t face pressure to negotiate, or to moderate the most extreme versions of their extreme positions.

A party with a super-majority also faces no obstacles to rewarding its donors and supporters; in Indiana, that has given us policies that almost uniformly favor the well-to-do. It has defeated even the most minimal efforts to protect renters. It has given us privatization programs like vouchers, in which our tax dollars are used almost exclusively by the well-to-do while impoverishing the public schools that serve poorer children, and it has given us what is arguably an unconstitutional effort to protect gun manufacturers from litigation.

That super-majority has also blocked more stringent ethics measures.

Any super-majority—Republican or Democrat—gives those in power the ability to ignore contending arguments, unpalatable data and the needs of Hoosiers likely to vote for the opposing party. They don’t need to negotiate or compromise. They don’t even need to look like they’re negotiating or compromising.

Indiana can’t get rid of the gerrymandering that makes our legislature’s extremism possible—we lack a referendum or initiative, mechanisms that have been used by other states to institute nonpartisan redistricting. In this state, only the legislature itself—only the people who benefit from the system—can change it. The only way Indiana will get rid of the gerrymandering that allows legislators to choose their voters rather than the other way around would be Congress passing the John Lewis act, which (among other very positive things) would make gerrymandering illegal nationally.

Since the GOP benefits from America’s gerrymandering far more than the Democrats do, passing the John Lewis Act would probably require a Democratic trifecta: a Democratic House and Senate to pass it and a Democratic President to sign it.
Until that happens, if it ever does, Indiana’s Republican gerrymandering is likely to continue giving Hoosiers a Republican legislative majority. But we do have a chance this year to defeat the super-majority, and to slow down our state’s march toward culture-war extremism. One reason is the shifting demography that I previously mentioned. Another is that the GOP has moved so far toward a very unconservative extremism that its candidates are turning off voters who previously voted Republican.

Those realities give four candidates in particular a better-than-usual chance to win their districts:
• Josh Lowry, District 24;
• Tiffany Stoner, District 25;
• Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and
• Matt McNally, District 39.

We’ll now hear from each of them.

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How Gulllible Are MAGA Folks?

Periodically, it’s important to remind ourselves that an average IQ of 100 means that half the population falls below that figure. That statistical reality might help to explain the results of a recent poll reported by The Washington Post. This wasn’t a “horserace” poll; instead, it was an effort to see just how many Americans have accepted elements of Donald Trump’s constant firehose of  misinformation.

Actually, it wasn’t simply the acceptance of inaccuracies or distortions that caused my jaw to drop. It was the nature of so many of those lies–claims that are bizarre even by Trump standards.

A majority (52 percent) of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants “abducting and eating pet dogs and cats.” Excluding those who are “not sure,” twice as many say it’s at least “probably true” as say it’s at least “probably false.” (There remains no real evidence for this claim. Officials have debunked it and linked it to threats, and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday called it “a piece of garbage that was simply not true.”)

43 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “in some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth” — another claim Trump referenced at last week’s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)

28 percent of Trump supporters say they believe that “public schools are providing students with sex-change operations,” something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.

81 percent of Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is “deliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions” to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)

There are a number of other claims that don’t require a departure from reality, but instead rely on public ignorance of government, policy and credible news sources. Seventy-seven percent of Republicans evidently believe the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined, while 70 percent say they believe millions of undocumented immigrants are arriving in the U.S. every month. Another 70 percent insist that inflation is at its highest rate ever.

The numbers on those counts aren’t terribly surprising in context, given the many false things Trump supporters have convinced themselves of in recent years. For example, most Republicans have told pollsters that Trump didn’t try to overturn the 2020 election, that Trump didn’t have classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump’s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 election. And of course there is the 2020 stolen-election claim that as many as two-thirds of Republicans have believed.

It is important to emphasize that these percentages are based upon responses from self-identified Republicans. When the survey turned to independents, it found that those respondents disbelieve the Haitian migrants claim by more than 2-to-1, with thirty-five percent saying it’s “definitely false” and only seven percent saying it’s “definitely true.”

The gaps are even wider on executing babies and sex changes in schools. More than 6 in 10 independents dispute both, and relatively few independents — less than one-quarter — embrace them. Many independents are actually reliable voters for one side or another, and the data suggest these are probably Republican-leaning ones.

The article concludes that Trump is largely preaching to a credulous choir, while other, potentially decisive, voters generally see his conspiracy theories for what they are. That is undoubtedly true–Trump has made no discernable effort to expand his MAGA base. Instead, the GOP strategy seems focused on mobilization, on turning out that base, presumably by playing on its fears and bigotries with allegations unlikely to be accepted by more knowledgeable–and less racist–folks.

There are two lessons here. One is a political conclusion that most of us had already reached: this will be a turnout election. Trump’s base is simply not big enough to elect him if enough sane people vote. That’s why the enthusiasm for Harris/Walz and the explosion of grass-roots GOTV organizations are such hopeful signs.

The other lesson is more of a reminder. America has always harbored people who are lightly tethered to reality, people who are ill-equipped, whether intellectually or emotionally, to understand or accept the world they inhabit, and who–as a result–are vulnerable to even the most ridiculous lies and conspiracy theories. The country has also always harbored figures willing to cater to those people–to amplify their fears and to promote their hatred of “the Other” in order to gain political or social advantage. That isn’t new.

What is surprising (at least to me) is how many of them there are…..

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A Different Kind Of Homelessness

I recently had breakfast with two former faculty colleagues. The bulk of our conversation focused on the upcoming election, and thinking back on it, a couple of things struck me: despite MAGA folks’ belief that all college professors are left-wing socialists or communists, in a former, more rational time, all three of us would have been considered somewhat right of center.

But of course, the center has moved. A lot.

In 1980, I ran for Congress as a Republican. I won a Republican primary. I was pro-choice, and (to the extent it even came up then) pro-gay rights. For a couple of years after I lost the general election, people came up to me and said things like “I just couldn’t vote for you because you were so conservative.”

My husband and I met as officials in a Republican city administration; when we married, a reporter who covered the city (we had those back then) told me “the press guys like both of you, but you are both kinda right-wing.”

I don’t think I was ever “right-wing” –my positions were more consistent with what was then the GOP mainstream than with the Rightwing fringe of the party–but I was a traditional Republican.

Since 1980 I’ve changed positions on a few issues, because I learned more about them, but my basic political philosophy and approach to policy has not changed–yet today, I’m considered “far Left.”

I stood philosophically still, but the Overton window moved.

Part of the problem is political vocabulary. Americans talk about Liberals and conservatives, but those terms don’t describe our contemporary politics. MAGA and Trump are anything but Conservative as that term has historically been understood. (For that matter, they lack any coherent political philosophy at all, unless grievance and animus can be considered political positions.)

That reality has left genuine conservatives politically homeless. There’s a reason so many prominent conservative Republicans have endorsed Kamala Harris. (When George Will supports Harris, you know the GOP has jumped the shark.)

To the extent Trump has any policy positions, they are anathema to real conservatives. When the GOP was a genuine center-right party, it championed free trade, not tariffs and protectionism. Conservatives wanted limited government– Barry Goldwater insisted that “Government doesn’t belong in your boardroom or your bedroom.”  As Reagan left office, he made a speech about the importance of immigration. In foreign affairs, conservatives were strong supporters of NATO and opponents of dictators–and they understood the importance of joining with liberals in a unified approach to issues beyond the “water’s edge.”

Real conservatives venerate the Constitution and its checks and balances. They celebrate freedom of speech and a free press. When the GOP was conservative, it stressed the importance of respect for democratic processes and institutions, for law and order. Trump and MAGA constantly attack the very foundations of a working democracy– the press, the Department of Justice, the FBI, even our military leadership and especially the integrity of the electoral system. The old GOP might have disagreed with Democrats and liberals about how these principles should be applied, but they endorsed the principles.

Let’s be accurate: whatever else today’s GOP may be, it is not conservative.

As an essayist in USA Today recently put it,

As someone who works in the world of words, I understand that their meaning – and use – can change over time. Yet, something I greatly resent is how the Republican Party has conflated Donald Trump with conservatism… To me, conservatism means a belief in free markets, individual liberty and limited government.

As a result of the party’s move toward neo-fascism and theocracy, authentic conservatives have found themselves homeless. Thoughtful conservatives–appalled by what the GOP has become and unwilling to call themselves Democrats–have nowhere to go. Many of them will vote Blue this year rather than holding their noses and voting for Trump (or, in Indiana, for our Hoosier Christian Nationalists). Some won’t vote at all.

The disaffection and homelessness of genuine conservatives will help Democrats this year, and in a year where our choices really are between good and evil, that’s something to celebrate. But going forward, the transformation of one of the major parties in a two-party system into an anti-democratic cult is a disaster, and not just for real conservatives.

Good policy requires negotiation and compromise among good-faith advocates of varying perspectives. Civic peace requires respect for democratic institutions. This country needs two adult parties equally committed to the democratic process.

It is increasingly doubtful that the GOP can be redeemed from its current status as the new Confederacy, but unless that happens– or a third party somehow emerges– genuine conservatives will remain homeless.

NOTICE: TOMORROW evening at 7:00 P.M. I will introduce a Zoom event featuring four candidates who have the ability to shift four seats in the Indiana House from Republican to Democrat and break the super-majority’s stranglehold:  Josh Lowry, District 24; Tiffany Stoner, District 25; Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and Matt McNally, District 39. I will begin the event by explaining why one-party rule keeps dragging Indiana in the wrong direction.

You can register here. There is no charge.

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