EDITORIAL:

Finally, some Republicans have begun standing up for democracy

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Brian Hayes / Statesman-Journal via AP

Rep. Mike Nearman leaves the House of Representatives after the vote to expel him at the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Ore., on Thursday, June 10, 2021. Republican lawmakers voted with majority Democrats in the Oregon House of Representatives to take the historic step of expelling the Republican member who let violent, far-right protesters into the state Capitol on Dec. 21.

Sun, Jun 20, 2021 (2 a.m.)

As the Republican Party increasingly tilted toward extremism in recent years, Americans outside the party wondered how so many members of the GOP could go along with the madness.

Now, thankfully, it appears a few responsible leaders within the GOP are drawing a line.

Witness the following:

• A group of moderate Republicans in Nevada, including leaders in the Clark County party and the Nevada Republican Senate Caucus, called out the extremist state party leadership after reports that several individuals associated with the violent Proud Boys group had swung a recent vote to censure GOP Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske over her refusal to parrot bogus claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

• Idaho Republicans are staunchly opposing anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy’s gubernatorial campaign in that state. “We do not support his antics or his chaotic political theater,” the state party chair posted on Facebook. “That is not the Idaho Republican Party, and we will not turn a blind eye to his behaviors.” Bundy, who along with his family are connected with violent militia organizations and radicals in the sovereign citizen movement, entered the race despite not being registered to vote in Idaho or registered in public records as a Republican.

• In Arizona, Republican leaders in Maricopa County have condemned GOP state lawmakers for their obviously partisan review of county ballots in the 2020 election, for which the lawmakers hired a cybersecurity firm that has never conducted an election audit and whose founder promoted former President Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud on social media. The Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors described the review as “a grift disguised as an audit.”

• For the first time in Oregon state history, lawmakers voted to expel a state legislator — Republican Rep. Mike Nearman, who was revealed to have helped plan an armed incursion in the state Capitol last year. The vote was 59-1, with all 22 GOP House members agreeing to oust Nearman and Nearman’s being the only vote against. Nearman came under fire after he was captured on video letting far-right rioters into the building. “I saw the people outside,” said Rep. Daniel Bonham, R-The Dalles. “Nobody should have opened a door to the people who were here that day.”

These are just a few recent examples. Others occurred in the direct aftermath of the election, such as in Georgia, where GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his aide Gabriel Sterling and other Republicans defended the accuracy of the state’s balloting from attacks by purveyors of Trump’s lies about fraud.

This resistance is desperately needed, and we applaud those who are waking up to the dangers of the extremists in their ranks. Six months out from Trump’s departure from the White House, finally a small but defiant force in the GOP is finding steel in spine and is standing up for American values.

Will these lonely voices of sanity be enough to turn the tide against the GOP leadership’s happy embrace of autocracy? Who knows? What’s afoot among the party’s far-right leadership is a full-on anti-American values movement.

Central to this are the Big Lie and the assaults in 47 states on voter accessibility and independent verification of voting results. These include voter suppression laws aimed at disempowering and disenfranchising communities of color, curtailment of mail-in and absentee balloting to tamp down overall participation, and provisions for GOP-led state legislators to usurp the decisions of county elections officials.

As the party lurches toward minority-party rule, it now finds itself locked in a battle for its soul between extremists and previously too-silent Republicans who believe in the rule of law and are realizing that too many in leadership are kneeling to radical right mobs racing to authoritarianism.

These centrists understand the dangers leadership has unleashed and now can’t control.Recall Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming revealing that some of her GOP colleagues told her they voted against impeaching Trump out of fear for their own lives from the right-wing forces that had been courted by the party.

This is why it’s critical for the moderates to step up: to stop the party from fully devolving into fascism, and thereby protect the entire country from more incursions by the GOP enemies of American democracy.

History has shown that movements like this can be stopped when moderates rise up and say enough. Alarmingly, though, it also shows how quickly these movements can gain momentum when moderates don’t step in.

It must be said that Republicans across the board, including some who are now awakening to the threat, played a role in getting us to this point. Decades before Trump’s candidacy, the GOP had been marching toward extremism through voter suppression, disadvantagement of minorities, economic policies that greatly increased income equality, and other destructive politics.

But the pace has accelerated in recent years. And as GOP-led attacks on voting cause states to fall like dominoes — Georgia, Arizona, Texas, etc. — the danger grows of future elections being overturned, tampered with or corrupted by Republican forces. Think about it: If only a handful of officials spread across a few key states had caved in to Trump last year, he could have successfully subverted an election he lost by 7 million votes.

At its core, America stands for one principle, and that’s the vote. Free and fair elections are the base from which all of our other freedoms and values rise.

We support those in the Republican Party who recognize this and, at last, are standing up to their own party to protect the bedrock of American democracy.

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