Republican legislators are at odds with the people who elect them
Within the Republican electorate — the people who cast their ballot for a Republican candidate — there is a huge disconnect between many issues they support and the legislators they elect.
Republican voters, time and again, nationally as well as here in deep red Missouri, support many positions that align closer with Democratic party values. Particularly on ballot initiatives they vote with Democrats and Independents in support of policies that Republican legislators oppose.
Evidence of the disconnect in Missouri is shown by the voters rejecting so-called Right-to-Work and raising the minimum wage in 2018.
That would not have happened without significant numbers of Republican votes.
Using ballot initiatives, a majority of Missouri voters, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, passed laws prohibiting concealed carry in 2003; provided school funding tied to a casino tax in 2009; and passed a puppy mill act in 2011.
Showing their disdain for the voters, Republicans in the Missouri legislature overturned or gutted each of those laws.
In 2020, when Republican legislators wouldn’t expand Medicaid, Missouri voters passed Medicaid expansion via a Constitutional amendment. The Republican legislature then refused to fund the expansion until ordered to do so by a court decision.
The Republican voters who helped pass all those laws keep electing legislators who oppose policies/laws that have widespread support, reject the idea of citizen participation in direct democracy through ballot initiatives, and once the people have voted in favor do everything they can to subvert the will of the people.
The most recent national example of voters doing what their legislators won’t was in Ohio, where reproductive rights was enshrined in the state Constitution after their Republican legislature tried, and failed, to make it virtually impossible to pass.
That followed a string of victories, with no losses, in red states and blue, for reproductive rights. In Missouri, Republican officials have been desperate to keep us from voting on a reproductive rights ballot initiative because, as Missouri House of Representatives Speaker Dean Plocher said, “I believe it will pass. Absolutely.”
Like Ohio, the Missouri legislature has tried to make it more difficult for voters to pass ballot initiatives. Local Republican legislators Senator Curtis Trent and Representative Bill Owen, who clearly don’t respect voters having a voice through direct democracy, are hopeful that the legislature will try again to “reform” ballot initiatives — reform being a code word for making initiatives virtually impossible — by requiring an unattainable goal to get on the ballot or unattainable margin in order to pass.
Why are Republicans so set on keeping us from using ballot initiatives? Why do Republican legislators overturn or amend laws that are passed by ballot initiative? The only answer is that they fear what the people want when it isn’t Republican orthodoxy, and they want to defeat policies that they know are popular with the citizenry.
In state after state, election after election, including Missouri, people vote against their own interests when they elect Republican politicians.
Gene Davison lives in Springfield.
This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: There's a disconnect between GOP legislators and those who elect them
