GOP Passes on Its Own Party

Sometimes I just don’t get the Republicans. I certainly don’t get how the party of Lincoln can now be the party of Trump.

But in a more mundane way I don’t understand why they bother to put issues on the ballot only to abandon them.

On Saturday, Dianne and I drove part of the Fall Art Tour through the Driftless Region. As you follow the route to one artist’s studio after another you’re following a rich vein of Democrats. Many of the artists displayed Harris/Walz signs and none dared to show their support for Trump.

But along with those signs for Walz many had signs for other Democratic candidates and causes, most notably a ‘no’ vote on a constitutional amendment that would allegedly ban non-citizens from voting. I say “allegedly” because that’s already prohibited in federal and state elections. It could happen in local contests but no local government is considering that right now. So, the practical effect of the amendment would be to block places like Madison from allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections should the city ever decide it wants to do that.

And maybe that’s a small part of the reason that this is on the ballot. But the real reason is that some bright lights in the Republican caucus thought that finding a way to get immigration on the ballot would boost turnout for Trump and other Republicans. That’s ridiculous because everybody who shows up to vote is there to vote for president and maybe Senate. A goofy constitutional amendment is not going to get anyone to the polls who wouldn’t be there anyway for other reasons.

But if you’re going to put this thing on the ballot, wouldn’t it make sense to have a plan to back it up with some sort of campaign? I see no evidence of it. But I do see plenty of evidence of Democrats organizing against it. Again, Democrats will show up to vote for Harris and Tammy Baldwin, but at least organizers are using the opportunity handed to them by Republicans to do what they can to squeeze out another vote here and there.

The same thing happened back in August. Republicans ginned up a couple of amendments to restrict Gov. Tony Evers’ ability to spend federal emergency funds without their approval. The GOP did nothing to back it up while the Democrats used it as an organizing dry run for November. They beat the amendments.

I don’t think that will happen this time. My guess is that every Trump voter will vote in favor of the citizen voting amendment while some Harris voters will vote ‘yes’ as well. I’ll actually be among them. I get what the Republicans are up to here, but I just agree on principle that citizenship should be a basic requirement of voting in any election. And, yeah, I could see Madison trying to allow non-citizens to vote in local elections. So, I’ll be the rare, but not all that rare, Harris-Baldwin-Yes vote.

But this is hardly an important issue right now and the tail will not wag the dog. Nobody’s going to show up in this election just to vote on this. And why the Republicans aren’t even trying to make a case for it is a further mystery. Quite possibly they don’t have the money as they’ve been way out-fundraised by the Dems.