Alabama journalist dismantles state GOP party chair’s anti-democracy 'blabber'

A common talking point among far-right Republicans is: "America is a republic, not a democracy."

John Wahl, chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, repeated that claim during an early July appearance on radio host Jeff Poor's show. But Alabama-based journalist Kyle Whitmire, in an op-ed published by AL.com on July 10, lays out some reasons why that GOP talking point is both a "silly argument" and disingenuous.

Wahl told Poor, "The mainstream media wants us to think of ourselves as a democracy because that leads to socialism…. We, as a party, have allowed this to happen. If you go back and you watch Ronald Reagan, every time Ronald Reagan spoke of our nation, he said 'our republic,' and we have lost that. Even our Republican elected officials call us a democracy far too often, and we are not."

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Whitmire notes, however, that President Reagan himself referred to the United States as a "democracy" — he didn't view the words "democracy" and "republic" as mutually exclusive.

"Not only did Reagan speak of America and our allies as democracies, but he also proposed spreading democracy around the world," Whitmire recalls.

The Alabama journalist cites a specific Reagan quote from the 1980s: "The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy — the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities — which allows a people to choose their own way, to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means."

During his appearance on Poor's show, Wahl quoted Benjamin Franklin as saying he was anti-democracy — a quote that, according to Whitmire, there is no record of.

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"America is, as I've argued before, a representative democracy and a constitutional republic," Whitmire argues. "These are not mutually exclusive things, no matter how much Wahl and folks like him want them to be. It's like saying, that's not an automobile, it's a car, or that Monarch isn't a butterfly, it's a caterpillar."

Whitmire continues, "So, if there isn't such a distinction between democracy and republic, why does it matter so much to Wahl and those like him who blabber the same thing? Because they want there to be a difference — and that's scary. When someone tells you they don't believe America is a democracy, you can stop right there. They don't want America to be a democracy."

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Kyle Whitmire's full AL.com op-ed is available at this link.