Politico guest writer argues U.S. Constitution is the enemy of democracy

In the lead-up to the one-year mark of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, a Politico guest writer argued on Wednesday that the Republican Party as well as the U.S. Constitution are threatening democracy.

Corey Robin, a professor of political Science at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center, contributed an opinion column for Politico titled “Republicans Are Moving Rapidly to Cement Minority Rule. Blame the Constitution.” As the title implied, Robin suggested the Republican Party as well as the U.S. Constitution are preventing the “national majority” from acting.

“Driving the initiatives of the Republicans and the inertia of the Democrats are two forces. The first is the right’s project, decades in the making, to legally limit the scope and reach of democracy. The second is the Constitution, which makes it difficult for the national majority to act and easy for local minorities to rule. What happened on Jan. 6 is far less significant than what happened before Jan. 6 — and what has and has not happened since then,” Robin wrote.

While the Republican Party is targeted by Robin as “a novel threat to American democracy,” Robin concludes that the political party is using the barriers imposed by the Constitution.

“Democracy is not just the enemy of the Republican Party. It is also the enemy of the Constitution,” Robin wrote. “Americans associate the Constitution with popular liberties such as due process and freedom of speech. They overlook its architecture of state power, which erects formidable barriers to equal representation and majority rule in all three branches of government. The Republicans are not struggling to overturn a long and storied history of democratic rules and norms. They’re walking through an open door.” – READ MORE