6 Ways Rabid Republicans Are Declaring War On America

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4. Stopping immigration reform. The GOP, and especially the House majority, knows their power will be diluted if more immigrants become citizens and vote. They also know that many industries rely on low wages for immigrant laborers, including people that pay more in taxes than they receive in government services. But the House GOP will not take up a Senate immigration bill with amnesty and a decade-long path to citizenship. Even Fox News contributor, Republican Juan Williams, has derided House GOP leaders as racist. He should not be surprised, because today’s Republicans are bent on retaining their power by any means, instead of persuading voters in open and fair elections.

5. The attack on voting rights. The game plan here is as old as Reconstruction: block your opponents from voting. After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, Shelby v. Holder, gutting the Voting Rights Act’s toughest provision that blocked racially discriminatory voting laws from taking effect, GOP-led states— North Carolina this week and Texas previously—have put forth bills to re-segregate voting and elections.

What North Carolina Republicans are pushing through their legislature this week is on par with what Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State Ken Blackwell did before 2004, when his state re-elected President George W. Bush. Rick Hasen, a University of California law professor, wrote, “The bill is a nightmare for voting rights advocates: not only does it include a strict voter ID law and provision shortening early voting and eliminating same-day voter registration for early voting, it is a laundry list of ways to make it harder for people to vote.”

The Shelby decision gives the GOP room to plot redistricting scenarios to lock in safe seats in Congress and locally because the Justice Department’s threatened pushback is on untested legal grounds. Texas Republicans quickly said they would revise district lines, instead of waiting for the 2020 Census, as well as toughen state voter ID laws. These discriminatory steps in key states, coupled with the House GOP’s anti-immigrant bias, underscore the party’s defiant obsession with preserving its political power.

6. The attack on election regulators. Part of the attack on voting is an attack on election officials who were genuinely non-partisan, like North Carolina State Board of Election’s longtime director, Gary Bartlett. He was ousted earlier this year after two decades on the job after a new Republican governor reconstituted the state BOE. Bartlett had spent years making North Carolina’s election rules arguably the most progressive in the South. But the North Carolina GOP is also trying to end public financing for judicial elections, another successful anti-corruption program.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, outgoing Republican members of the Federal Election Commission are trying to ram through rule changes that would tie their successors’ hands with regulating money in federal campaigns. These changes in the arcane rules and ways that elections are run are designed to deter voters and coddle wealthy special interests.

Declaring Domestic Political War

Taken together, all of this might be seen as the desperate last throes of the modern GOP. But in politics, people who punch first often end up winning. They have an advantage with framing debate and setting the stage for ensuing fights and compromises. Despite Obama’s new campaign to defend the American middle-class, the president does not like to throw the first punch. He has been too busy with Obamacare implementation, and not, until Wednesday’s speech, with calling out the GOP and campaigning against them.

Meanwhile, the GOP, by passing draconian budget cuts, stalling on judgeships and gaming the rules in voting, are doing what entrenched ruling classes have always done to preserve their power. The summer after a presidential election is often politically quiet, but not so in 2013 with the Obamacare startup and big budget battles on the horizon. Instead, rabid Republicans are declaring war on the rest of America—again.