Michael Hiltzik: America is in the grip of a right-wing minority
Republicans and conservatives are fond of the shibboleth that "America is a republic, not a democracy." Boiled down to its essence, the phrase is a justification for awarding a strong voice in government to minority political views.
We are now at a stage where the minority is taking over. Worse, it's an extremist minority that has exploited imperfections in our system of government to impose retrograde policies on the rest of the country.
No better example exists than the string of far-right decisions handed down recently by the U.S. Supreme Court, most prominently in its 6-3 decision overturning the 50-year precedent protecting women's reproductive health rights via the 1974 decision in Roe vs. Wade.
But rulings overturning restrictions on gun rights — including the more than century-old New York law invalidated by the court last Thursday, as well as actions endorsing restrictions on voting, are symptoms of the same pathology.
Gerrymandering by GOP forces has cemented minority control of state legislatures.
In Wisconsin, where voter registrations are about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, the GOP thanks to a redistricting map drawn by Republicans and endorsed by a Republican-dominated state Supreme Court.
