'We get the government we want and deserve': Voters get stern telling off from WaPo writer

Voters tired of Republican lawmakers who strip women of their bodily autonomy, champion election-deniers and torpedoing voting rights only have themselves to blame.

This ruler-to-the-knuckle take comes from Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin, who argued Thursday the real problem is that Americans aren’t protesting hard enough.

“We get the government we want and deserve,” Rubin writes. “Ultimately, democracy is our collective responsibility.”

Rubin’s review of two political books — “Oath and Honor” by Liz Cheney and “Tyranny of the Minority” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt — certainly doesn’t hold back on criticism for Republican lawmakers that she blames for the resurrection of Donald Trump’s political career.

“Had Republicans not played along with the ‘big lie,’ not signed a brief attempting to disenfranchise millions of voters, not raised bogus objections to electoral votes, not maintained those bogus objections even after the assault on the Capitol, not acquitted Trump in his second impeachment and not continued to curry favor with him,” Rubin argues, “the nation long ago would have done away with the only president ever to refuse to transfer power peacefully to his successor.”

The columnist also heaps scorn on the “mob rule” of a “white, rural and Christian” minority she says wields undue power in Washington thanks to political devices such as the electoral college, gerrymandering and the filibuster.

Rubin backs her claim with a quote from Levitsky and Ziblatt on the Republican party: “If they had to win majorities, they wouldn’t radicalize. If they didn’t radicalize, we wouldn’t have the dysfunction that we have today.”

But then Rubin whipped out her ruler.

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“If Republican voters had recoiled in horror after Jan. 6, 2021, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) would have gotten the message,” Rubin writes. “If voters had taken to the streets in public protest and vowed to cast out Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin III (D-WV.) as well as all the GOP senators who filibustered voting rights, it would have passed.”

She went on, "When tens of millions of Americans reject the premise of our Constitution, resort to fascist methods to hold power and demand the country be redefined along racial and religious lines, no structural remodeling nor crop of virtuous politicians can save the republic.

"So, yes, reform the system and vote for better people, but the only real solution to what ails us is a surge of democratic activism, civic involvement and collective rededication to our constitutional system. If that happens, the rest will follow."

There is just one problem with Rubin’s argument: there were protests in the street.

Take Sinema. Her efforts to block the voting rights bill in January 2022 saw her own supporters take up a days-long hunger strike outside her office, a local Fox station reported at the time.

“They came with a message," reporter Matt Galka tells his viewers. "We voted for you once, we don’t know if we’ll do it again."

The year before, outraged activists took their protest so far they followed Sinema onto airplanes and into a college campus bathroom with cameras.

“In each case, they were mostly ignored by Sinema,” reported Cronkite News.

In Virginia, protesters outraged at Manchin's voting rights position organized a151-car motorcade to blaze past his Charleston office in commemoration of the 151st anniversary of the 15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote, Time reported at the time.

“We were in his face,” said a protester who told Time she frequently raised her voice against Manchin. “We’re here demanding, before it’s too late.”