Does The Tea Party And The GOP Really Want Jeffersonian Democracy? The Evidence Says No Jul 23rd 2013, 14:23
Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1805. New-York Historical Society. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Last week, my Forbes colleague and friend, Thomas Basile, published an article wherein he expressed his concern that we are reaching the end of Jeffersonian Democracy in America as a result of voters abdicating their responsibility to participate in the electoral process.
While I very much agree with Tom's conclusions, when it comes to highlighting how much is at risk as a result of Americans checking out of their duty to their democracy, I have to express more than a little surprise that Tom's piece manages to avoid the true villains of the piece when searching for the reasons we now seem to avoid the voting booth like the plague.
Tom correctly writes:
"We've drifted from Jeffersonian Democracy in a distressing way. Where Thomas Jefferson's concept of civic engagement was inclusive and sought to protect against the rise of aristocracy and therefore disenfranchisement and corruption. It sought to instill power and confidence in the system with the people. What has developed is eroding the fabric of our participatory system."
While this description lays out the problem beautifully, what amazes is that Tom continues with his article without so much as mentioning the role the Citizens United case played in turning government over to the very modern day aristocracy Jefferson feared and the equally disturbing impact of those Republican controlled states working overtime to deny certain citizens their right to vote.
Thomas Jefferson did, indeed, wish to protect the public against the rise of the aristocracy—in today's language, that would be exceedingly wealthy Americans and even wealthier corporations—along with the resulting disenfranchisement and corruption sure to follow.
Recent history has more than proven just how right Jefferson was in worrying that big money might take control of the people's government. Surely, Basile would agree that one would have to search far and wide to find a federal or state politician who is not, in a significant way, in the pocket of the big money contributors set free by Citizens United to buy political control of our government institutions.
And what would you imagine Mr. Jefferson would have to say about state governments who play with voting rules for the purpose of creating eight hour lines to vote or simply deny our constitutionally created birthright by demanding that voters pay money to acquire a voter identification card —translation: poll tax?
While modern day Republicans and Tea Part proponents like to turn to the importance of Jefferson's ideal of democracy when it suits them—yes, Jefferson mistrusted a strong, federal government and believed it should be severely limited in what it can do—they like to pretend that other core principles of Jeffersonian Democracy simply do not exist when it fails to meet their purposes.
My personal favorite would have to be the Jeffersonian perspective that it was critical to get out the vote in order to maintain a true democracy. Indeed, he was so committed to this notion as a critical piece of his version of democracy that he personally invented campaign techniques designed to get Americans to fulfill their obligation to their country by casting their votes.
Ironically, Jefferson's most successful agent in the effort to get voters to the polls was John J. Beckley of Pennsylvania who, during the 1796 presidential campaign, blanketed Pennsylvania with campaign workers who passed out 30,000 hand-written tickets naming the 15 electors that would have voted for Jefferson to win the White House (note that printed tickets were not permitted by law.) While Jefferson lost that election to John Adams, Beckley became known as one of the first presidential campaign managers in our nation's history.
I say 'ironically' when telling the above story because, today, Republicans in the state of Pennsylvania have been among the leaders of those seeking to take voting rights away from those who have displayed a propensity to vote for Democratic Party candidates. After all, who can forget the Republican Majority Leader in the Pennsylvania House, Mike Turzai, who said in a speech to the Republican State Committee—
"Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it's done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done."
And if Turzai's comments are not enough to make Jefferson spin over in his grave, how about Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason's recent remarks during an interview when asked if the attention given the new state voter ID law—designed to limit the voting among those living in heavy democratic areas of the state while also precluding students from going to the polls in Pennsylvania—said,
"Yeah, I think a little bit. We probably had a better election. Think about this, we cut Obama by five percent, which was big. A lot of people lost sight of that. He won, he beat McCain by 10 percent, he only beat Romney by five percent. I think that probably voter ID helped a bit in that."
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