Ballots are seen at the Weld County Elections office in Greeley on June 25, 2024. (Andrew Fraieli/Colorado Newsline)
Conservatives often insist that the United States is “a republic, not a democracy.”
It’s actually both, and many Americans use the terms interchangeably. But what’s irrefutably true is that democracy — rule by the people — was there from the beginning, whatever republican systems accompanied and shaped it. It’s also true that democratic values have only increased over the country’s history, as some of its most celebrated exponents have noted. “Of the people, by the people, for the people,” the most poignant expression of America’s democratic impulse, issued from no less an authority than our first Republican president.
Many Colorado Republicans are confused about all this.
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The founders understood that what they were creating was a constitutional democracy.
“We, sir, idolize democracy,” John Marshall said during the Virginia Convention to ratify the proposed Constitution. The Constitution itself exposes its democratic heart at the outset: “We the people.”
But some readers pass right over those words.
“This is your daily reminder that America is a Constitutional Republic, not a Democracy,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Windsor tweeted last year. It’s hardly the only time the state’s most prominent Republican has dismissed one of the nation’s core values, and she leaves no room for doubt about her contempt for democracy.
“We’re not a democracy. So quit with that,” Boebert said on “ The Charlie Kirk Show .” “Maybe that’s where you’re getting it wrong is saying we’re a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic.”
Ken Buck, a Republican member of Congress from Colorado until he resigned in March, is also a democracy doubter. The founders wanted to make sure “that we were represented in a Republic — not a democracy, in a Republic,” he told Colorado Public Radio .
Members of the Park County Republican Party so disdain democracy that they passed a resolution this year that says, “The United States of America is a republic, not a democracy … The nation is not, and never was intended to be, a democracy. Democracy is not the goal.”
The resolution passed by a tally of votes — like in a democracy.
This kind of rhetoric has a long history on the right. In 2020, the Heritage Foundation published a lengthy “report” called “ America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy ” (which in hindsight tracks all too well with the think tank’s authoritarian plan for a second Trump administration, Project 2025 ). But Republicans in recent years have intensified their opposition to democracy, and it’s instructive to examine why.
Their motive seems not to deter tyranny of the majority but to demand tyranny of the minority.
When they inveigh against democracy, what they often mean is pure democracy, where every citizen participates in policymaking. But this is a red herring, since American democracy has always involved elements of representation. A republic involves representation, too, as well as other checks on popular passions to prevent “tyranny of the majority.”
“As the saying goes, a democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner,” former Heritage president Edwin J. Feulner wrote .
American democracy largely does operate in a way that protects the lone sheep from the many wolves, so there’s something else driving the anti-democracy emphasis.
The Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote only once, in 2004, since 1988. Conservatives on the Supreme Court hold a majority, but their rulings, such as overturning a federal right to abortion access and placing presidents above the law, often cut against the will of a majority of Americans. Trumpist Republicans like Boebert have normalized within conservative circles the notion that elections should be rejected if the outcome is unfavorable.
In other words, their motive seems not to deter tyranny of the majority but to demand tyranny of the minority.
That’s not a position most Republicans would advertise, but a false concern about democracy offers convenient cover. And here’s a tell — Colorado Republicans laud democracy when it suits them.
After the attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life last month, state House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese framed the attempted assassination as “a clear attack on our democratic principles.”
Ty Winter, the assistant minority leader, who has ties to the far-right Proud Boys , mentioned at the time “the importance of supporting those who protect our leaders and our democracy.”
The Colorado Republican Party in a lawsuit last month against party members who are trying to sack Chairman Dave Williams suggested in its complaint to the court that actions by disaffected members were a threat to “a functional democracy.” At times, even Boebert presents herself as a friend of democracy.
So, which is it?
Best to judge by their actions Republicans’ respect for the sovereign authority of the people. Their presidential candidate last time he ran rejected the results of a free and fair election and led an attempted coup. The Colorado Republican Party endorsed him, thereby condoning the most grievous attack on democracy in American history, and Republican indulgence of the lie that Trump won the 2020 election has degraded trust in democratic processes almost to the breaking point.
They dishonor the democracy established at the nation’s founding, and they fail the standards that ensure it can persist.
“What are the favorite maxims of democracy?” Marshall said at the Virginia Convention. “A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.”
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