Thread by @ThePlumLineGS

1) An extraordinary story is unfolding in North Carolina, where the campaign operative for a GOP House candidate is being investigated for election fraud.

Meanwhile, GOP power grabs are underway in other states.

The larger context linking these stories is important.

*THREAD*

2) We are not hearing much from national Republicans about this sordid North Carolina tale.

This is odd, isn't it? After all, Republicans love to scream about fraud in elections -- when they’re using it to justify voter suppression.

3) As it happens, North Carolina is one of the states where Republicans attempted one of their most brazen voter suppression schemes.

In my book, I recount some of these capers. The NC version is amazing in its naked targeting of black voters:

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

4) But the voter fraud cited to justify such schemes is itself a fraud.

My book runs through some of the research bearing this out. Voter fraud is akin to deaths by lightning strike:

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

5) We don’t know what will happen with NC mess. But meanwhile, serious power grabs are underway in WI and MI, where Rs are moving to strip powers of incoming Dem governors -- *after* they were elected.

In WI, this overlaps w/new restrictions on voting:

washingtonpost.com/politics/repub…

6) The larger story here: It is inescapably true that Republicans have been far more willing to engage in this type of destructive procedural warfare than Dems have.

The best political science designates this as “asymmetric constitutional hardball”

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

7) Both parties play constitutional hardball, to be sure. But it’s deeply *asymmetric.*

And as @jbview and @donmoyn explain, the Republican variety is just much more destructive:

@jbview @donmoyn 8) Some folks want Dem to learn from this and close the “hardball gap.”

If and when Dems eventually take back more power, there will be a big debate on this topic.

It raises legitimately tough questions. Here’s the general formula I propose for Dems:

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

9) Anyway, if you want lots more information, history, political science, and scholarship about this general topic, and what can be done to de-escalate the hardball, I tried to put it all in one place right here:

amazon.com/gp/product/006…

10) For now, when describing these tactics, please refrain from euphemistic descriptions like this one in the NYT.

Thanks in advance.

FIN