The obvious answer is that a lot of Republican officials were willing to steal the 2020 election, and since then, the party’s behavior has gotten worse. Douthat pooh-poohs concerns about “provisions tucked into the voting regulations being passed in states like Georgia and Texas that [some] fear set up postelection power grabs” by assuming the state legislatures won’t use them. If he were really interested, as he claimed, in taking the Republican threat against democracy seriously, he would see a serious risk that they’d use such provisions in 2024, and that the legislators who introduced and championed them are auditioning for leading roles in the next coup attempt.
He could do this as a matter of prudence or as an induction from the pattern of corruption in the Republican party over the past five years—or he could merely observe what elected Republicans are doing and saying. This July, Georgia’s overwhelmingly Republican legislature began using the new powers it gave itself to regulate elections directly, starting down the path to taking over election administration in Atlanta-area Fulton County. A spokesperson for Republican Governor Brian Kemp says it’s due to “poor management and incompetence.” But Trumpists have made Fulton a focus of their baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud, and Republican state legislators who sponsored the bill said they would have intervened in Fulton if they’d had these powers in 2020.
Just as it took the Capitol attack for Douthat to admit he lacked “imagination,” it may very well take an actual state legislature negating the express will of the voters for him to “imagine” the thing lawmakers have already promised. If he hasn’t heard these promises, or doesn’t believe anyone will try to carry them out, perhaps it’s because he just doesn’t want to.
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