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On the eve of the impeachment vote in the House of Representatives (it's scheduled for Wednesday, but could get bumped Thursday, depending on how drawn-out debate gets), things are looking mighty bleak for anyone who hoped Republicans might turn over a new leaf. For the last several months, there has been plaintive hope that GOP lawmakers might be moved by the overwhelming evidence that Donald Trump is guilty of running an extortion scheme against Ukraine's leaders to help him win re-election in 2020.

Right now, it looks like there's no chance of any Republican defections in the House away from the GOP line that Trump did nothing wrong. The one Republican, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who admitted out loud that Trump deserved to be impeached, was duly ejected from the party. In the Senate,Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been openly braggingthat he intends to rig the Senate trial in Trump's favor. Even supposedly Trump-skeptical Republican senators, such as Utah's Mitt Romney or Maine's Susan Collins, have been avoiding questions about whether the Senate should call witnesses for the trial.

In the face of all this, a small group of anti-Trump Republican leaders who have been heavily represented in the media George T. Conway III,Steve Schmidt,John WeaverandRick Wilson published an op-ed in the New York Times denouncing not just Trump, but the Republicans who support him. In the piece, in which the authors also announce the formation of a new political action group meant to deprogram Trumpists into what they perceive as normal conservatives, they attribute this loyalty to Trump to fear.

"But this presidents actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans," they write. "They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities."

Fair enough on the second claim there is no doubt that Trump is guilty, and keeping him in power is an abdication of the duty of congressional members to defend and uphold the Constitution. But it's naive to think that this choice to back Trump's criminality is being done out of fear. Instead, the likelier story is that most Republicans support Trump not despite, but because of his all-out assault on our democratic system.

Whatever word you want to use for it fascism, authoritarianism, pick your poison the grim reality is that Republicans, both politicians and voters, appear to be all in on this project. It's painful to admit this, but Republicans have flat-out rejected democracy. As a group, they are pushing towards replacing democracy with a system where a powerful minority holds disproportionate and borderline tyrannical control over government and blocks the majority of Americans from having meaningful say over the direction of the country.

Republicans are not cowering in fear of Trump. On the contrary, they are exalting in his shamelessness. Watching Republicans at impeachment hearings, where they performed outrage for the cameras, lied with obvious glee and gloried in sharing conspiracy theories, it did not appear that they were intimidated bytheir president or anyone else.

No, Republicans clearly feel empowered by Trump. He frees them to reveal their darkest desire which is to end democracy as we know it, and to cut any corners or break any laws necessary to get the job done.

And the Republican voter base is right there along with the politicians. A new Washington Post/ABC poll found that, despite recent hearings that made it almost comically obvious how guilty Trump is, Republican voters are standing by their man. When asked if Trump should be impeached and removed from office, 86% of self-identified Republicans said no. In fact, in the face of mounting evidence of Trump's guilt, Republicans are digging in even more. Fewer Republican voters support impeachment now than a similar poll showed in October.

It's easy to write this off as pure tribalism, and there is no doubt that's a big factor. But that can't account for the entire phenomenon, especially since Democrats have shown no interest in pursuing evidence that Vice President Mike Pence was involved in the crime (though it does appear he is implicated), which would mean that dumping Trump wouldn't actually cost Republicans the White House.

No, the darker truth is that Republican voters, like Republican politicians, see clearly what Trump did use the power of his office in an overt attempt to cheat in the 2020 election and they love it.Like their leaders, Republican voters are feeling done with democracy and eager to follow Trump into a new world, where the majority of Americans who vote for Democrats are kept out of power, by any means necessary.

As a Twitter user claiming to be "a white male in a red rural area of a red southern state" explained in a persuasive and widely shared thread on Monday, conservative voters have convinced themselves that they "are fighting for their lives and country," which they believe is under threat from racial diversity. They therefore "feel justified in voter [s]uppression as a result" and "in winning by any means necessary."

(I disagree with his proposed fix of pandering to this racism and sexism by giving these voters a centrist white male candidate, but he is 100% right that conservative voters feel that they are entitled to torch democracy rather than share power with people who don't look like them.)

As Michelle Goldberg recently wrote in the New York Times, "Trumps political movement is pro-authoritarian and pro-oligarch" and is "contemptuous of the notion of America as a lofty idea rather than a blood-and-soil nation."

We can get into the intellectual nitpicking weeds over whether or not this is "real" fascism, but what should be indisputable is that the urges that drive Trumpism differ in no meaningful way than those that drive fascism.

It's a movement of white men and their wives who hold a narrow, racist, reactionary view of what being an "American" is. They believe that those of us who don't fit into that view because we're not white or because we're not Christian or because we're pointy-headed intellectuals who believe in free thought or because we're queer or because we're feminists are not legitimate Americans, therefore not legitimate voters. So Trump's law-breaking to undermine the 2020 election is seen only as a necessary corrective to the "problem" of a pluralistic democracy.

That is why there's such deep division in the U.S. over impeachment. It's not that conservatives can't see what Trump did when he used the power of his office to cheat in the 2020 election. They just don't care. If anything, they're glad he did it. This is the same party that repeatedly tried to shut down the government during Barack Obama's presidency and was hugely successful in blocking his judicial appointments. This is the party that suppresses votes and gerrymanders districts into meaninglessness. They feel entitled to run the country and do not care if the voters disagree. Voters are just one more obstacle to be overcome in the Republican power grab.

There may be matters of style where many Republicans differ with Donald Trump although they've largely gotten over that. But they see him as their single best weapon for ending American democracy, which Republicans increasingly see as an obstacle to their true goals.

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Are Republicans afraid of Trump? Hell, no he's destroying democracy and they love it - Salon

It is usually the proviso of Christmas Day snacking or visits to your nans. But in New Zealand a country with a penchant for on-the-fly problem-solving the humble biscuit tin has become a mainstay of parliamentary democracy.

There, as in Britain, members bills are a chance for MPs to have laws that they have proposed debated in the house.

But unlike in Westminster, in Wellington those bills are represented by plastic bingo counters in a 30-year-old biscuit tin. A curled, yellowing paper label taped to the front helpfully proclaims: Members Bills.

Each plastic counter represents a bill, and when there is space on parliaments order paper for a fresh round of proposed laws, a member of the parliamentary service digs into the tin for a lucky dip.

It was what was available at the time, Trevor Mallard, the Speaker of New Zealands parliament said of the tin, adding that it had initially contained a mixed selection of biscuits.

The tin was introduced after parliamentary reforms in the 1980s that changed an earlier method for keeping track of members bills a list to a ballot draw.

It was just a convenient thing to use

This was a method of randomising and keeping the ability for relatively current issues to have their chance of being selected, Mallard said. The list, he said, had been inefficient; most bills on it were never reached.

I think 30 years ago, random number-generating computers were probably a bit rarer than they are now, and it was just a convenient thing to use, he said.

The tin came to international prominence this week when the team behind the BBC TV show QI tweeted about it.

Finally! Our sophisticated randomisation apparatus gets the international recognition it deserves, tweeted the official New Zealand Parliament account.

The official receptacle is stored in an office at New Zealands parliament, Mallard said. Its not in a place where it has enormous public access but its not in a safe or anything.

New Zealand is known for its socially progressive legislation, often passing bills on hotly contested issues ahead of other western countries. Some of those matters had become law only after their random selection from the biscuit tin, Mallard said.

Among them were marriage equality, legalised in 2013, and assisted dying, which will go to New Zealanders for a referendum in 2020.

Governments often have a reluctance to lead on social change but often there are members who are prepared to stick their necks out and do what they think is right in this sort of area, Mallard said. This probably provides just a bit more opportunity for them to do it.

While the tin looks a little worse for wear, Mallard does not anticipate needing to replace it.

This was designed to keep biscuits fresh and I cant see the counters going off in the next hundred years, he said.

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Biscuit tin democracy: the humble start of New Zealand's most progressive laws - The Guardian

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen

University of Birmingham experts are leading a 1 million drive to understand the rise of populism across Europe as the threat posed by right-wing political parties encourages mounting opposition to immigration and Euroscepticism.

With rising populism often portrayed as one of the most pressing challenges for the future of national and EU democracies, researchers will explore the roots of populism by examining political, economic and sociological factors.

Challenges for Europe" is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and will explore the socio-economic and cultural roots of European populism. Experts at five European universities will analyse existing data and new survey results across 10 European countries during national elections occurring before the 2024 EU elections.

Researchers at Birmingham join counterparts at the Universities of Mnster (consortium coordinator) and Exeter, as well as VU Amsterdam and La Sapienza (Italy) to explore the political landscape in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Romania, France, Sweden, Hungary and Poland.

Project lead Dr. Lorenza Antonucci commented: Our project links socio-economic explanations such as labour and financial insecurity to cultural reasons like the rise of authoritarian values and disappearance of cultural norms that underpin populisms rise.

We will look beyond the grievances of globalisation and capture the widespread socio-economic malaise affecting the squeezed middle, whilst investigating the role of welfare state reforms and labour market policies. We aim to identify factors that push and pull individuals towards and away from populist voting.

The project includes a number of high-impact initiatives to help EU institutions and European states address populist demands, guided by the research questions such as:

The interdisciplinary cross-national team will isolate single issues and responses to help create an EU policy toolkit that will inform policy work around insecurity and work conditions of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR).

Research will be cutting-edge - analysing existing probability data from the European Social Survey and the International Social Survey Programme alongside new primary data that will be collected through Voting Advice Applications (VAA) - online information tools that will help researchers understand how voters respond to political parties positions.

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Birmingham leads 1 million analysis of rising populist threat to democracy - University of Birmingham

Coverage of elections, including this one, inevitably depicts them as a popularity contest between the party leaders focused on fluctuations in opinion polls and satisfaction ratings. Even where issues rather than personalities seemed to occupy the agenda with Brexit in the case of Conservatives and the NHS in the case of Labour the analysis remained concentrated on the respective leaders handling of these questions. We focus on individuals rather than institutions, on leaders rather than movements.

Consider the disproportionate attention given to leadership debates and the criteria used to assess them. Which of the candidates won the debate? Did Boris Johnson convince people he is fit for office? Did Jeremy Corbyn look prime ministerial?

Democracy is in trouble when the image of the messenger is more important than the content of the message. And yet the former seems to have been the question that has preoccupied commentators. Yes, we were told, the Labour party manifesto is its most radical ever, but is the leader going to enjoy the job of being PM?

It shouldnt need to be said, but enjoying office is not essential to responsibly exercising political duties. Our representatives dont need to have more passion, more expertise, more charisma, better looks, more ordered lives than the ordinary citizens they represent.

If a polity were ruled by good people, Plato wrote in The Republic, people would try as hard to avoid office as they currently try to obtain it. Politics is a duty, it is not a vocation. The more fond politicians are of their jobs, the more likely they are to cling to office. The greater dexterity they have in exercising power, the higher the risk that they will abuse it one day.

The celebration of expertise in politics belongs to an anti-democratic tradition, one that has often been deployed to undermine the power of the masses

The modern professionalisation of politics is grounded on an implicit asymmetry between those who rule through their greater skills and expert knowledge, and the ordinary citizens that make up the rest of the body politic. Political leaders are praised for possessing the right talents combined with the right experience, a set of qualities that is thought to enable them to make appropriate judgment under increasingly complex circumstances. This is the politics of virtue, a very different one from the politics of justice.

The celebration of expertise in politics belongs to an anti-democratic tradition, one that has often been deployed to undermine the power of the masses to dismiss rule by the many (democracy) in favour of rule by the best (aristocracy). Where only the best people rule, so the argument goes, political institutions are more stable; the more experienced and skilled the leaders, the less vulnerable the political community.

The division of labour across society and the differing skills required for different jobs is often invoked to explain why politics needs expertise. In increasingly complex societies, marked by the specialisation of tasks and requirements of efficient performance, it is not hard to see why. Representing your peers in parliament or leading a government is a job like any other, like being a doctor or a plumber, some would argue. One individual has the task to fix broken societies, just as another helps fix broken legs, while another repairs broken sinks.

Yet it is a mistake to think of politics as a task on a par with all these others. When elected representatives are authorised by us, ordinary citizens, it is not because they have special charisma or skills or a claim to know better. If they do, we should be wary. Elected representatives are entitled to act on our behalf because they share our beliefs and commitments. If they dont, we have a duty to ask for change.

When we vote for a party that reflects our principles, we articulate a judgment on how we want society to be, and choose individuals that endorse that view on our behalf. They dont need to be better than us ordinary citizens. In fact, they ought to be like us, because one day we may be in their place.

Democratic legitimacy is not served by perfect leaders it is endangered by them. Charisma can undermine proper scrutiny if the arguments of the many are silenced by the rhetoric of one. When democratic institutions are strong, one does not need to rely on the power of single individuals.

This is not to deny that certain conditions must be in place for citizens to exercise that power adequately. It is also not to deny that a degree of familiarity with how institutions work is bound to be of help. Clearly, in contemporary liberal societies these conditions are met by only a select few.

But if a certain set of knowledge and skills is required to be active in politics, surely the right response is to educate all citizens so as to spread competence equally, to seek to distribute these skills and assets more widely, and to collectively build the political capacity to achieve that goal. It is definitely not to celebrate the virtues of those who possess leadership skills compared to those who do not.

Lea Ypi is a professor in political theory in the government department at the London School of Economics

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Johnson or Corbyn? Democracy is in trouble when were obsessed with leaders - The Guardian

So now we know. Now we know what happens when you declare war on democracy. Now we know the consequences of demeaning the largest democratic vote in a nations history. Now we know what becomes of a political class that sneers at voters, silences their democratic voice, and libels them as racist, xenophobic know-nothings who cannot be trusted with stewardship of the nation. You get punished. You get rebelled against. You get replaced. Last night, in those extraordinary election results, we witnessed the revenge of democracy.

You dont have to be a fan of Boris Johnson or his withdrawal treaty to appreciate the significance and even brilliance of yesterdays events. The results are striking, historically so. Labour suffering one of its worst results in decades, the Tories winning a powerful majority which, in the final days of the campaign anyway, not many people were predicting. Most striking of all has been the corrosion, collapse in fact, of Labours red wall that historic terrain of red constituencies stretching from North Wales through northern England. Well, its not red anymore: brick by brick it has fallen, with vast swathes of people who have voted Labour for decades turning to the Tories this time.

Stockton South, Darlington, Wrexham all Tory seats. Even saying that sounds strange. Bolsover, held by Dennis Skinner since 1970, now has a 5,000+ Tory majority. Former mining towns that have long loathed the Tories Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield have turned blue. Bishop Aucklands Tory MP 25-year-old Hull-educated Dehenna Davison is the first its had in its 134-year history. Don Valley is gone, too, despite MP Caroline Flints best efforts to warn her party that its betrayal of its working-class, Brexit-backing voters would cost it dear. The wall hasnt only been breached its been torn down.

The red wall collapse is the most significant, telling event in this election because it speaks, clearly and profoundly, to the revolt-like nature of yesterdays ballot-box rejection of the Remainer elites. These working-class communities were at the sharp end of the elites seething contempt for Brexit voters. When you heard liberal-elite EU lovers or the performative radicals of the bourgeois Corbynista movement bemoaning the low-information, demagogue-swayed sections of society who had apparently been misled into backing Brexit, this is who they were talking about. The good people of Blackpool South, of the Vale of Clwyd, of Workington all Tory seats this morning. That poisonous contempt was aimed most directly at these people. And now these people have responded. They have returned the contempt that has been heaped so heavily on them these past three-and-a-half years.

The red-wall revolt against Labour feels era-defining. This is working people rejecting that foul old idea that they would vote for a donkey so long as it was wearing a red rosette. This is ordinary people rebelling against the neo-aristocracy of the woke identitarian middle classes who have hijacked the party their forefathers founded. And this is an uprising against anti-democracy. For more than three years the political class has agitated against the largest democratic vote in our history. They have used every legal and parliamentary trick in the book to thwart or delay Brexit. And now the people have passed their judgement on this disgraceful behaviour. Democracys payback.

Just consider the ridiculous, authoritarian figure of Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson. Shes lost her seat. She said bollocks to Brexit, the people said bollocks to her. Just as they have to many Remoaner MPs who tried to stymie democracy. Guess what? People take their vote seriously. They know it was hard fought for. They know people struggled and even died for this every-now-and-then piece of paper that allows every free adult citizen to determine the shape and nature of government. They do not take kindly to its being undermined, whether by the EU or our own anti-democratic elites here in the UK.

Already leftist elitists are demeaning this mass vote against anti-democrats as the work of racist idiots. These stupid voters remain in the intellectual stranglehold of evil tabloids and populist demagogues, they claim. They will never learn. This is precisely the kind of contempt that made people turn against the aloof left and technocratic elites. More importantly, yesterdays election shows the opposite of what these anti-democrats claim. It shows that people can think and decide for themselves. For three years people have been bombarded with overblown threats and hysterical warnings about the dangers of Brexit and the vulnerability of our economy and public services if we go down the populist route. Well look after you by stopping Brexit and doing the right thing, politicians assured them. The people rejected all of this paternalistic guff. They thought for themselves and said, Nope. This was an act of an independent people.

We have a job of work making sure Boris doesnt sell out Brexit. Well get to that. For the time being lets recognise and celebrate what this election reminds us of: that democracy remains the greatest corrective to elitism and tyranny that mankind has ever invented.

Brendan ONeill is editor of spiked and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan ONeill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

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The revenge of democracy - Spiked