On Believing Republican Politicians

Photo by United States Senate – Office of Lisa Murkowski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Over and over it seems that we are confronted here with a lot of hand waving from the Right about how Republican politicians are just responding to cultural cramdowns from the Left when they advocate for oppressive state laws, or throwing meat to their base – and thus we while should take them seriously about issues and grievances, we shouldn’t take them literally. The current debate which brought this into focus at OT was the confirmation hearings of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court, to replace the retiring Stephen Breyer. Within that thread, it was suggested that the federal courts, including SCOTUS need to be pared back because they keep tossing out national solutions for what amount to state problems, and our democracy would be tons better if, as they appear poised to do on abortion, SCOTUS just tossed most of this back to the states.

Of course, tossing things back to the states is a favored conservative play, as it sort of harkens to the treasonous secession of the Civil War without coming right out and saying it. The Confederacy, after all, fought that war to preserve the Southern States’ “rights” to continue engaging in chattel slavery of dark-skinned Africans and others. Much as the Lost Cause would like us to forget all that, we won’t. Nor should we.

And yet Republican politicians are deploying this pernicious approach left and right. The least bad current example is Indiana Senator Mike Braun, who managed to take his open contempt for Roe V. Wade and heap it on Virginia v, Loving:

The reporter asked again, reiterating the question and asking if Braun would be okay with Supreme Court leaving interracial marriage to the states.

Braun doubled down, saying “Yes, I think that is something that if you’re not wanting the Supreme Court to weigh in on issues like that, you’re not going to be able to have your cake and eat it too, it’s hypocritical.”

“We’re better off having states manifest their points of view, rather than homogenizing it across the country as Roe v. Wade did,” he added.

Of course, when his real words made national media (in an election year no less) he tried to walk it back, but the damage, and the reality was done. Mike Braun joins a long list of Republican politicians who don’t want SCOTUS setting national standards for national questions, because it might force states to become aligned on those questions, which in turn might make it harder for certain groups to retain what they see as their rightful power in the world.

But notice where his ire starts — Roe V. Wade. The single animating decision of the 20th century SCOTUS (at least as far as Republicans are concerned). After 50 plus years of misogynistic, classist rhetoric against a woman’s right to medical privacy in the choice of obtaining an abortion, Republicans are now poised – as a matter of states’ rights – to roll back that protection. Mississippi’s current ban will likely be the vehicle by which this occurs, but it is by no means the worst of the approaches in play.

Rather, Texas, Missouri, and now Oklahoma have taken the desire to control women to a horrifying end state. Texas fired first by passing a law that said if you help a woman get an abortion in any way you can be sued by a private citizen who can collect $10,000 when they win. Because placing private bounties on people helping women seeking abortions is somehow better than the state simply enforcing a ban. And when this was appealed to the conservative dominated SCOTUS, they declined to issue an injunction preserving status quo ante while the case became ripe for litigation. Meaning the public in Texas can begin seeking these bounties while maybe some sort of litigation does something somewhere.

Not to be outdone, Missouri is debating a bill that criminalize performing an abortion on women who are Missouri residents, no matter where it is performed:

Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, an Arnold Republican, has proposed a measure that would make performing an abortion on a Missouri resident — or helping a Missouri resident get one — illegal. Like a similar law in Texas, the prohibitions could only be enforced through lawsuits filed by citizens. State government would have no enforcement authority. The U.S. Supreme Court has, for now, allowed the Texas law to remain in effect while courts consider challenges to it.

But Coleman’s measure goes further by asserting authority over what happens outside of Missouri. “If your neighboring state doesn’t have pro-life protections, it minimizes the ability to protect the unborn in your state,” Coleman told The Washington Post, which reported on her proposal earlier Tuesday.

And because the South loves a party, the Oklahoma House passed perhaps the most restrictive abortion ban in the country following a bill already passed by their Senate:

The legislation — known as House Bill 4327 — bars a physician from performing or inducing an abortion at any point in the pregnancy unless it is “to save the life” of the pregnant person. Similar to Texas’ six-week abortion ban, the new legislation would allow private citizens to pursue civil actions of up to $10,000 against anyone who performs or “aids and abets in the provision of such an abortion.” Lawmakers added an emergency clause for timing so that if the bill is signed into law, it would take effect immediately.

Notice here that Republicans seem to have found a useful way to return the tyranny of pre-Roe days in ways that reinvigorate both “states’ rights” – in this case to dictate reproductive terms to women – and to keep the state “clean” legally by pushing enforcement into civil litigation by private citizens. Missouri crosses a huge line of course, by insisting it has jurisdiction over its citizens even when they are not in the state. Incidentally that’s a thing that those countries don’t generally do, unless the citizen in question is a diplomat (who is often expelled for bad behavior anyway).

Abortion is not the only area where this devolution to “states’ rights” is attacking the federalist republic fabric of the nation. The Texas Attorney General opined that parents who work with doctors and psychologists in treating transgender kids using the most current medical and psychological guidelines are committing child abuse. And since those professionals are mandatory reporters the AG essentially required them to begin reporting these parents to the state. The Governor then piled on by directing state agencies to initiate investigations into this “abuse.” The Governor and AG seem to believe the state of Texas has the right to force their morality on parents and providers. While they have not yet laid the language of “states’ rights” over this action (and it is being litigated in the courts under an injunction preventing enforcement), the actions of the Governor clearly show he believes the state of Texas has the right to actively persecute these parents and providers.

Well sure, I can see so many folks here saying , states do have the right under the Constitution to do these things. Says so quite plainly in the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Unfortunately for Republicans (and their defenders) that delegation is not now meant to be a defense of the reintroduction of bigotry, the reinforcement of misogyny or the repowering of tyranny against transgendered or homophobic people. Again, turning to the Constitution, the founders told us why they were creating this document:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The language of “states’ rights” being deployed again to enforce abortion bans or cram down conservative myths about transgendered youth runs counter to establishing Justice, promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty in as much as these actions by the several states restrict the liberty of those affected, they eliminate justice, and they degrade the general welfare.

So why should we believe Republican politicians then when they do these things? Clearly they can’t be serious. Their fealty to the Constitution as a Party would prevent this. The Courts will save us.

Yet in three states led by Republicans, it’s now or soon will be legal to hunt people helping women seeking abortions, prosecute them under civil law, and be rewarded financially for that persecution. In one of those states the legislature is debating whether they as a state have the “right” to interfere in other states governance. Clearly Republican politicians have decided that they and their states do have these rights. and clearly they are seeking to “flood the zone” with bull sh!t hoping to suppress the rights of some groups and citizens in their quest for power.

Based on their actions we should believe them. The real question is will enough of us oppose them so that our union can be preserved? They are already sliding down the slippery slope, and where it leads is nothing good for our Nation.