Whether or not Democrats choose to acknowledge it and act accordingly, the dominant fact of American politics is the Republican Party’s open embrace of white, conservative Christian dominance and an accompanying turn towards authoritarianism the GOP sees as necessary, given the steadily decline of the white Christian population relative to other demographic groups. It should be plain as day that the GOP has determined that if democracy no longer serves the power of its constituents, democracy should be considered as an obstacle to be overcome. The ultimate evidence of this, as I have argued before, is the fact that the last Republican president attempted a coup to stay in power, yet remains the dominant favorite of both base and elected officials to be the party’s standard bearer in 2024. Indeed, since January 6, much of the party’s energy, particularly at the state level, has been aimed at ensuring that proper mechanisms are in place so that a future coup attempt will succeed, accompanied as well by technically legal but clearly anti-democratic efforts to deny the power of the vote to Democratic-leaning groups. Meanwhile, the party has acted to sabotage the Biden administration’s efforts to defeat the covid pandemic, from senseless opposition to mask mandates to coddling vaccine conspiracy kooks, in the hopes of undermining the president’s ability to govern or get re-elected. The mix of anti-democratic industriousness, embrace of insurrectionary violence, and willingness to weaponize mass death in pursuit of political power means that the January 6 coup attempt never really ended; rather, the GOP has entered into a state of slow-motion insurrection against American democracy that continues to the present day.
Part of the surrealness of our times is that the Democratic Party has, by and large, simply refused to acknowledge the basic fact that the GOP has effectively divorced American democracy. From President Biden’s continued emphasis on bipartisan legislation, to Democrats on the January 6 committee divided on whether to refer the former president’s lawlessness to the Justice Department for prosecution, the party is gripped by a denialism that serves neither their own nor the country’s interests. You don’t have to agree with my provocative “GOP is in insurrection” take to be able to see that the Republican Party has abandoned adherence to democratic norms and ideals; yet the Democratic Party, as a whole, declines to focus anywhere near sufficient attention on the GOP’s turn to authoritarianism. (Likewise, and in related fashion, the party has inexplicably refused to engage in a no-holds-barred pushback against the GOP’s state-level assault on civil, women’s, and gay rights).
I’ll be honest; even I sometimes have my doubts about whether “insurrection” is too harsh a description for what the GOP is engaging in. Yet, like clockwork, Republican politicians continue to engage in behavior that reminds us that something far beyond the bounds of “normal” politics is underway, and that insurrection is a useful framework for understanding what’s going on. The most recent example is in Texas, where GOP Governor Greg Abbott has instituted a strict regime of vehicle inspections at the U.S.-Mexico border in retaliation for the Biden administration’s relaxation of Trump-era immigration restrictions implemented on the basis of the covid pandemic. While Abbott is technically using his state’s legal authority to regulate vehicles, the intention is clearly to exert influence over border policy — a matter of national regulation. Abbott has given his game away, both by declaring that the vehicle safety inspections are aimed at drug and human smuggling, and by engaging in discussions with Mexican governors aimed at pressuring them to increase border security in exchange for Abbott relenting on the inspections. As Josh Marshall points out in a rundown of the situation at the border, it’s not just that Abbott has arrogated to himself foreign policy and interstate trade regulation that rightly belong to the federal government; he’s also inflicting economic damage and contributing to inflationary pressures in the U.S. economy, as long delays of trucks bringing in industrial supplies and agricultural goods contribute to product shortages and food price hikes:
Abbott’s move seems constitutionally dubious at best. State governors have no authority to regulate or interdict other trade between US states or international trade. He is able to do it under the guise of ‘safety inspections’. But the federal government already does safety inspections. And these are clearly being used to throttle trade which, again, states have no authority to do.
The U.S. continues to be wracked by supply chain disruptions and inflation. This move seems designed — and well designed — to exacerbate both. Abbott’s calculation, probably accurate, is that he can create chaos and price spikes to pressure Biden and it’s no skin off his back since Biden will be blamed anyway. It’s all gravy.
I would argue that Abbott’s behavior goes far beyond bare-knuckle politics, into actions adjacent to the insurrectionist mindset evident in the events of January 6 and the GOP’s opposition to common-sense covid measures. Abbott isn’t simply staging political theater; he’s actively undermining the American economy, and the lives of U.S. citizens, in the name of advancing his own power, not to mention indirectly challenging unquestionable prerogatives of the president and the federal government. Perhaps it shouldn’t be 100% surprising given that it’s Texas we’re talking about, but he’s behaving as if his state were a sovereign nation in conflict with a hostile foreign power — that hostile foreign power being not Mexico but the United States of America.
This impression is only strengthened when we stop to consider that Abbott’s actions are of a piece with, and indeed may have been inspired by, the trucker protests that snarled traffic and daily life in Canada’s capital and along key border crossings with the U.S. a couple months ago, as Josh Kovensky writes in a great summary of the Texas situation. Only, in this case, Abbott is an elected government official who is, in Kovensky’s apt words, “using the power of the state to apply pressure for his own political hobby-horse.” This really gets at what’s so ominous about Abbott’s actions — he’s deploying his own governmental powers against the interests of the United States, in the name of advancing his own political power and undermining his political opponents.
This is radical stuff, and should be treated as such. Heck, even Texas business interests are mad as hell, seeing millions of dollars worth of food start to spoil, and other costly damages due to the delays. Yet, we have yet to heard any significant critique from the Biden administration. The clincher is that, as we can see from the business community’s criticisms of Abbott, he’s put himself out on a limb here. He’s got to know he’s gone beyond his actual authority; yet the longer he’s not challenged, the more his risky gambit starts to look not just like smart politics, but acceptable politics. And while it’s true that Abbott would surely be delighted to drag the Biden administration into a fight and increase his national profile as a conservative standing up to the president, the Biden administration runs the parallel risk of tacitly normalizing Abbott’s arguably insurrectionary behavior. The Biden administration, and Democrats more generally, simply don’t think they can benefit from confrontations with the GOP over hot-button issues — even when it’s clear to an objective observer that, in this case, Abbott is clearly running the risk of becoming the poster child for grand-standing politicians being a root cause of inflation in the United States.
More broadly, the lack of a Democratic response is of a piece with the more general Democratic failure to confront the Republican Party over its willingness to harm American interests for partisan gain. If the Democrats had already been hard at work making such a case, then they would be able to easily slot Abbott’s behavior into this pre-existing, established conduct. Instead, the continued lack of a coherent response invites continued norm-breaking by Republican politicians, who are increasingly assured that they will either pay no political price for hurting their fellow Americans and assaulting our political order, or will be able to benefit off perceptions that it’s an isolated “partisan squabble” not tied to a larger GOP assault on America. While it’s a good rule of thumb in politics not to respond to every provocation or to let your opponent retain the initiative, the Democrats’ continued refusal to describe a through-line in the GOP’s democratically destabilizing behavior has become a central part of our crisis. If the Democrats won’t consistently push back in the name of majoritarian governance and protection of the majority’s interests — whether political, economic, or social — then what on earth will stop the GOP from pursuing an anti-democratic agenda to its furthest end points?