The one question to ask Republican friends

Do you believe in democracy? That's the question to ask Republican friends.

Many avowed conservatives will say "We're not a democracy. We're a constitutional republic." This is nonsense. True, America isn't a direct democracy, as ancient Athens was (if you didn't count its slaves). But of course we're a kind of democracy--as our Constitution mandates. "Democracy" doesn't mean "Direct Democracy." That's just one kind. We're a representative democracy--another kind, included in the basic dictionary definition of "Democracy."

Once you've batted down that detour, ask once again "Do you believe in democracy?"

This is crucial, because nearly all the Republicans in the U.S. Senate have demonstrated that they don't believe in democracy.

The Senate's 41 Republicans don't represent 41% of the voters. They represent about a third, due to the fact that Montana gets the same number of senators as California, and the most populous states (Texas notwithstanding) are mainly Democrat majority, while the least populous states (Delaware notwithstanding) are mainly Republican majority.

So now we have the disaster of one third of the American people being able to dictate legislation to the other two thirds. Nothing in the Constitution's careful set of checks and balances envisions or supports this kind of minority rule.

Do Republicans really believe it's better to have minority rule of this sort than for the other party to get to enact the legislation it was elected to enact?

Say you're a doctrinaire Republican--opposing "big government," deficit spending, expansion of the federal government, foreign involvements except when absolutely necessary, and social issues such as abortion.

Say the party in the majority would, given its way, enact legislation that goes against all of this.

Then would supporting your agenda and opposing theirs justify, in your mind, destroying our democratic form of government?

A key component of an advanced democracy is the losing side accepting defeat. The Republican Party leadership has decided not to do this. Gridlocking the United States Senate is just one example of this new policy--the policy of the permanent campaign, of demonizing the other side, of claiming that the Republican Party's ends justify the means now being used.

Remember the Republican reign of Congress from 1994-2006? Time after time they railed against Democrats using a lightweight version of the Republicans' gridlocking tactics, demanding that judicial confirmations and a lot more go to "an up or down vote." Now the Republicans have abused Senate rules about filibustering to block 70% of Democratic legislation and personnel confirmations. They're preventing over 2/3 of Senate work from reaching that "up or down vote."

So ask your Republican friends: "Do you believe in democracy? Because your party's leadership doesn't. And if you actually believe in democracy, pressure your party's leadership to follow suit and quit blocking everything."

Note that I'm not saying this because I want everything the Democratic Party wants. I don't, as this blog's other entries demonstrate. But I do want to live in a democracy, and I'm willing to pay the price of not getting what I want all the time in order to reap the benefits of living in a democracy. Are Republicans?

If not, they've morphed from a political party into a primitive tribe in which tribal loyalty trumps principles.

Are most readers of liberal newspapers Republicans?

Editorially liberal newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post get hundreds of comments on their editorials and op-ed pieces.

I've started to realized that many of those comments aren't from readers. But if not, who are these people? --especially the ones who insert general-purpose right wing rants, often with numerous spelling/grammar errors that don't seem to match reader demographics for the publication in question.

But how do you prove it?

I took a Washington Post op ed piece advocating changing the U.S. Senate's filibuster rules, which have gotten a lot of attention since being used by the Republicans to block healthcare reform. Historically, they first came into prominence when Southern senators used filibusters to try to block segregation reforms.

I read the hundreds of comments and categorized them into pros and cons and off topic rants (many about healthcare reform), along with whether they were pretty much nonpartisan or appeared to be making left wing or right wing talking points.

Here's what I posted in the comment thread for that article:

As of 10:32:03pm, here's how the hundreds of comments on this thread divide up:

72 support Senate rules reform on bipartisan grounds, though a lot of these want term limits more than a change in filibuster rules

26 oppose reforming the filibuster rules on nonpartisan or bipartisan grounds

33 more support Senate rules reform on a Democratic Party partisan basis.

44 more oppose reforming the filibuster rules on a Republican partisan basis.

This gets us 105 favoring Senate rules reform by combining bipartisan and Democratic pro- comments, and

70 opposing Senate (filibuster) rules reform by combing bipartisan and Republican anti- comments

But...
there were also 91 off-topic rants against all things Democratic by Republican posters,

along with 51 off-topic Democratic partisan posts--mostly in response to the off-topic Republican rants, and

30 more off-topic nonpartisan rants, mostly of the "pox on both your houses" variety.

Put this all together and you have 135 explicitly Republican posts vs. 83 explicitly Democratic posts.

So--is it reasonable to assume that either a large majority of Washington Post readers are hard-core Republicans--the sort who believe President Obama is a foreigner, a Marxist, and a Muslim terrorist...

Or that many if not most of the Republican off-topic rants come from those who aren't actually Washington Post readers?

If the latter is true, why is it true?

Three possibilities:

1. Some of the posters are sad, angry little souls whose only real human contact is the negative intimacy they derive from flame wars online.

2. Others are Republican activists mounting something like a DNS (Denial of Service) attack on mainstream comment threads to disrupt them and to create the false impression that more people share their beliefs than is true.

3. Or some? many? are doing this for money. I have seen two right wing websites offering this service. No idea whether it's true. Seems plausible though.

Another question: how did the non-WaPo readers find their way to this article's comment thread? Are there groups monitoring major publications who then direct them to such comment threads through blogs? Or what?

12/27/2009 10:50:00 PM