Fortress MAGA

The Tennessee state legislature’s expulsion of young Democratic lawmakers as punishment for protesting gun violence is being widely described as an extraordinary outlier.

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Tennessee events are also part of a larger story that is unfolding all around the country: GOP state legislatures are resorting to increasingly novel, overbearing and indefensible power plays to hold off the rising tides of backlash unleashed by their descent into reactionary rule.

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[The "Tennessee Three"] protests, while raucous, were peaceful, and according to the Tennessean, no lawmaker has ever been expelled for breaching decorum rules.

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Before the [Covenant school shooting last month], Tennessee Republicans had been weakening gun laws every which way. After it, one Republican went viral for declaring that “we’re not going to fix” the problem, which for many protesters typified GOP pro-gun mania and helped inspire their response to it.

All of this mirrors a larger story. Red states are sinking deeper into virulent far-right culture-warring — banning books, limiting classroom discussion of race and gender and prohibiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth.

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Republican state legislatures have become particularly aggressive in pushing “preemption” laws restricting cities and counties from making their own rules or policy choices. In some cases, these could functionally block those localities from governing themselves democratically in more socially liberal ways on all kinds of issues.

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Whenever state-level Republicans undertake another reactionary lurch, it often goes national in a big way. Attention has poured down on everything from insanely broad book bans to shockingly harsh proposed punishments for abortion to anti-transgender crackdowns with truly creepy implications.

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And the more onerous the use of state power in these situations, the more attention it gets.

Tennessee illustrates the point: If Republicans hadn’t sought to expel the Tennessee 3, you might never have heard of them. As commentator Charlie Sykes puts it, Republicans both “look horrible” and have turned the Tennessee 3 into national “superstars.”

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Young voters often get their political news through this sort of viral circulation. All this will surely color their perceptions of the national GOP. Is this what Republicans want, after losing a Supreme Court race in ultra-divided Wisconsin by a stunning margin, partly because abortion rights drove uncommonly robust youth turnout?

The GOP retreat into Fortress MAGA will continue apace. But how high will Republicans have to build those walls?

  WaPo

They seem to be building their fortress out of straw bales.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 06/16/2023: