Wednesday, February 17, 2021

 Inverted Democracy: Why Democratic Elites Hate Normal Americans  NASA/Bill Ingalls via Wikimedia Commons  February 17, 2021  Scott Wheeler 

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Once again, the political establishment in Washington DC misses the point. The latest assault on the Republic comes from FiveThirtyEight senior writer Perry Bacon Jr. who points out that Republican Liz Cheney is much more popular in Washington DC than she is in Wyoming, the state she represents:

“Republicans in the U.S. House this month opted to keep Rep. Liz Cheney on the Party’s leadership team despite frustration over her vote in favor of then-President Trump’s second impeachment. And Cheney and other congressional Republicans who either backed impeachment or publicly criticized Trump over his attempts to overturn the election results haven’t faced any real repercussions from their GOP colleagues in Washington,” writes Bacon.

For the ruling class establishment, it is good news that most Republicans are not punishing their uni-party Republican colleagues who joined Democrats in attacking Trump. The bad news, according to Bacon, is that a large number of Republican voters are outraged at the party sellouts:

“Local and state-level Republican parties are sharply attacking and even formally censuring prominent figures in the party like Cheney who have broken with Trump.”

And that kind of democracy, writes Bacon, is bad for the political class:

“The party’s most-Trump and pro-Trumpism contingent and the forces in the party pushing its growing radical and antidemocratic tendencies are often not national Republicans, but those at the local and state levels.”

Get it? Voting against the interests of the overwhelming majority of the people you represent is pro-democracy, and opposing the interests of the political establishment is anti-democracy.

And they wonder why we refer to them as “The Ruling Class.”

Bacon’s distorted views of democracy are shared by nearly everyone in the Washington power structure. Many Americans have noticed the increasingly duplicitous standards pouring out of official Washington: Democrats are allowed to question every election, without evidence, but if Republicans raise questions over any election it is called “insurgency” and “an attempt to overthrow democracy.Peaceful conservative protestors are labeled dangerous extremists. Violent rioters, cheered on and bailed out by elected Democrats, are called “peaceful protestors” who have a virtuous cause.

Bacon reveals how he and his fellow self-appointed “elites” see democracy in this stunning observation about Republicans:
“The party’s more establishment wing seems to be more powerful the higher up the government ranks you go.”

In other words, Bacon is praising the establishment Republicans for ignoring their own voters. That is the opposite of democracy and the epitome of elitism.

Perhaps what really angers Republican voters is not Liz Cheney’s or Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s personal opinion of President Trump, it’s that they willingly gave aid and comfort to a corrupt ruling class that is furious that Americans chose Trump over its recycled political establishment candidates. Trump made it all the worse by not allowing the political class to intimidate him.

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