Claims that former President Donald Trump and the GOP pose a grave \u2018threat to democracy\u2019 have become a key Democrat talking point ahead of the 2024 elections, but several prominent Republicans and experts say it is really President Biden\u2019s party that is working overtime to undermine the vote.<\/p>\n
To make their case, they point to Democrats\u2019 efforts to keep Trump off the ballot, imprison him, stifle free speech on social media, and rewrite election laws while fighting measures designed to protect ballot integrity. Those ongoing efforts, they say, are a much bigger threat to democracy than the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot Biden and Democrats frequently cite.<\/p>\n
Biden summed up those efforts in a speech last year about saving the \u2018soul of the nation\u2019 from Trump and his fellow Republicans, claiming they represented \u2018an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,\u2019 were \u2018a threat to American democracy,\u2019 and \u2018a clear and present danger\u2019 to all Americans.<\/p>\n
Most recently, Democrats have thrown their weight behind state-level legal efforts to prevent Trump from appearing on 2024 presidential ballots, including in Colorado, where the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 earlier this week that the former president violated the Constitution\u2019s 14th Amendment when he \u2018engaged in insurrection\u2019 concerning Jan. 6, and should be disqualified.<\/p>\n
\u2018Democrats cynically used the COVID-19 pandemic to radically undermine long-standing election laws on the fly and then started pushing for non-citizens to vote in U.S. elections,\u2019 Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told Fox News Digital. \u2018Now the left is working to remove political opponents from the ballot in a shocking display of disregard for the American people\u2019s right to choose their candidates.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018These attacks on the democratic process drive down voter confidence and trust in the electoral system. Meanwhile, the RNC and our partners are fighting to make sure the American people choose their presidential candidates, not the courts,\u2019 she said, adding that the RNC was trying to protect election integrity by fighting for policies to ensure only American citizens vote in elections.<\/p>\n
Legal expert and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley agreed, calling the Colorado court\u2019s ruling \u2018the most anti-democratic opinion in decades,\u2019 and arguing that Democrats\u2019 claims about protecting democracy \u2018would be more compelling if they were not supporting the effort to block voters from being able to vote for Trump and canceling primaries in states like Florida.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It is also difficult to claim the mantle of the defender of democracy when your party is actively fighting for the censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views,\u2019 Turley added. \u2018The best way to defend democracy is to practice it by supporting both the right to vote and to free speech in others, including those who hold opposing viewpoints.\u2019<\/p>\n
Turley\u2019s reference to censorship concerns accusations the Biden administration engaged in efforts to violate Americans\u2019 First Amendment rights by working with Big Tech platforms to police controversial social media posts pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic and the president\u2019s son, Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court agreed in October to review a court-ordered ban on certain communications between the Biden administration and Big Tech after state attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana accused high-ranking government officials of working with social media companies \u2018under the guise of combating misinformation.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Democrats challenging Biden for the party\u2019s presidential nomination, including author Marianne Williamson, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., and now-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., all fault the Democratic National Committee for silencing them by refusing to hold primary debates.<\/p>\n
Prior to shifting to running as an independent, Kennedy also faced the wrath of his fellow Democrats at a July House hearing on the \u2018weaponization\u2019 of the federal government intended to address censorship.<\/p>\n
Democrats on the committee unsuccessfully attempted to halt the hearing and instead use it to blast comments previously made by Kennedy that they said were anti-Asian and antisemitic.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing,\u2019 Kennedy said in response.<\/p>\n
Despite their actions, recent polling has shown Democrats hold an advantage in swing states when it comes to which party is most trusted on the issue of protecting democracy.<\/p>\n
According to Republican strategist Garrett Ventry, that advantage is attributed to Democrats\u2019 \u2018obsession\u2019 with talking about \u2018threats to democracy\u2019 in place of issues where they fail to win over the American people, such as the economy, prices and jobs.<\/p>\n
\u2018They know they can\u2019t talk about those issues because the American people know that they\u2019ve handled those in a very abysmal way. The border is wide open, inflation has been very high over the last couple of years, the economy is stagnant and people feel like their financial situation is worse,\u2019 he told Fox.<\/p>\n
\u2018There is no greater threat to democracy in our republic than the Democrat Party,\u2019 Ventry said. \u2018When Donald Trump was sworn into office, he never went after Hillary Clinton. He didn\u2019t go after Barack Obama. He didn\u2019t go after his political opponents. We didn\u2019t have state attorneys general and state secretaries of state and district court judges trying to get Joe Biden off the ballot.\u2019<\/p>\n
Ventry pointed to Biden\u2019s Department of Justice targeting other individual Americans, including Catholic church-goers, parents attending school board meetings to express concern over what was being taught to their children, and lower-income Americans through the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents.<\/p>\n
\u2018They\u2019ve used every lever of government, whether it be the federal government, or state courts, to try to attack their political opponents here. And you\u2019re not seeing Republicans do the same across the country,\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n
Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., a strong advocate for ballot reform and voter turnout since leaving the Senate in 2021, told Fox that Democrats call Republicans \u2018election deniers,\u2019 and attempt to silence them whenever they object to their anti-democratic actions.<\/p>\n
\u2018Democrats fight commonsense safeguards to prevent voter fraud, encourage activist DAs to throw leading political opponents in jail, and empower unelected judges who interfere in presidential elections,\u2019 she said, adding that she was working in Georgia, a state expected to be competitive in 2024, to \u2018actively pushing back against the left\u2019s work to undermine election integrity.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018To prevent the further takeover of our elections, it\u2019s imperative that every state remains vigilant in defending actual democracy rather than just protecting Democrat rule,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
Loeffler argued that Democrats would \u2018rather gain power by moving the goalposts than by defending their policies and track records,\u2019 and that they know they\u2019ll \u2018have a lock on elections and government power\u2019 if they abolish voter ID laws, restore voting rights for felons, allow ballot harvesting and legalize same-day voter registration.<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s the number one reason they look away while the U.S. breaks records for illegal immigration: non-citizen voting is at the top of their wish lists this Christmas,\u2019 she said before adding that the Colorado court\u2019s ruling to keep Trump off the ballot was just the latest example of Democrats\u2019 \u2018non-stop work to undermine democracy and interfere in the 2024 elections.\u2019<\/p>\n
As the 2024 election draws closer, the latest efforts by Democrats to stop Trump by any means necessary have begun to give pause to some of the party\u2019s thought leaders, including former Biden official Tim Wu, now a professor at Columbia University.<\/p>\n