Opinion

GOP election tactics threaten our republic

Apolitical party that stakes its future on allowing fewer people to vote does not deserve a future. A democracy that accommodates such a party will not have a future.

That is our nation’s present crisis, 234 years after the Constitutional Convention created a government with no prescribed role for political parties.

George Washington, for one, feared them. The Republican Party has now become what he famously warned against in his Farewell Address.

Alarmed at the partisanship already brewing during his presidency, Washington decried “the common and continued mischiefs of the spirit of party.” The words today look eerily prescient.

That spirit, he said, “(S)erves always to detract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions …”

The phrases I italicized could be Washington saying from the grave, “I told you so.”

Until recently, both major parties tried to be big tents. The Democratic Party of the racists James Eastland and Jesse Helms nurtured the future liberal president Joe Biden. The Republican Party of Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was big enough for Hugh Scott, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen, who provided the leadership and decisive votes to break Southern filibusters and pass that law and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Ironically, those laws delivered the South to the GOP exactly as President Lyndon Johnson sadly predicted. And yet Republicans continued as late as 2006 to vote overwhelmingly for four successive extensions of the Voting Rights Act’s key provisions, including the essential pre-clearance requirement that the Supreme Court killed 5-4 eight years ago.

Those were the days.

Apart from their policy differences, Republicans and Democrats shared a devotion to the democratic — small d — institutions of republican — small r — government as expressed in the Constitution. The Watergate coverup offended enough Republicans to have impeached and removed Richard Nixon had he not resigned. It was Goldwater who led a Republican delegation to the White House to tell him it was time to go. He went, never attempting reprisals against those who had turned against him. But now, in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency and his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election (and with it, the Constitution) the Republican Party is acting remarkably like the Fascist and Communist parties that have fronted for dictatorships elsewhere. It has become a personality cult of a ruthless leader who doesn’t bother to conceal his dictatorial instincts. Its lesser officials, following Trump’s lead, are attempting to purge anyone, like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who put their duty to the Constitution ahead of their fealty to him. Even though Sen. Richard Burr is retiring next year, the North Carolina Republican Party hastened to censure him for voting to convict Trump in the second impeachment case.

Most Republicans in Congress voted in effect to overturn the results of the cleanly run election that the leader had lost, giving a symbolic victory to the insurrectionist mob that Trump had incited to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6. Three Republican members of Congress, including Madison Cawthorn, our 11th District representative, had helped feed the mob’s frenzy.

Now, as if Trump had been telling the truth rather than lying about losing the election, Republicans in more than 40 states are vigorously promoting legislation that would make early voting and absentee voting more difficult for many people.

Georgia’s new law is so vicious that it would be a crime to hand out water to people waiting in lines made longer by other parts of the legislation. One has to wonder whether the real purpose is to distract attention from the worst parts of the bill.

Those would allow the partisan Republicans in the Legislature to pre-empt state and local election boards if the vote counts aren’t going their way. That’s as brazen as anything ever foisted on the people of Ukraine, Belarus or Russia. Once that happens, the United States can no longer pretend to be either a democracy or a republic. Meanwhile, Raffensperger already has drawn opposition for re-election next year, including a Trump toady congressman.

In the manner of dictators everywhere, especially the Russian who controls him, Trump can’t abide anything other than absolute obedience. His vice president debased himself to Trump for nearly four years until Jan. 6, when he had to decide between illegally trashing Joe Biden’s electoral votes and accepting them as the Constitution required. Trump called him out to the mob and didn’t follow up to see whether he had escaped the insurrectionists shrieking “Hang Mike Pence.”

Lately, Trump failed to mention Pence among the other Republicans he would bless in 2024 if he doesn’t run himself.

The Republican assault on voting can’t be stopped without enactment of HR 1, the Democrats’ massive reform bill. But one Democrat, the 50th vote critical to enacting it, hasn’t signed on to the Senate version.

That’s Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who insists it needs Republican sponsors for the sake of bipartisanship.

It’s hard to believe that someone who was governor of West Virginia could be so naïve. He’s unlikely to find more than one Republican senator to support voting rights, let alone the 10 needed to break Mitch McConnell’s filibuster.

So the world’s oldest continuous democracy is on life support. The party that controls half the Senate, nearly half the House and a majority of state capitols treats obedience to the law, faithfulness to the Constitution, and support for honest elections and voting rights as acts of treachery.

The term “subversive” unquestionably describes that party. (Martin Dyckman is a retired journalist who lives in Western North Carolina. dyckmanm@bellsouth.net)

Martin Dyckman Guest Columnist

Apartment complex just doesn’t fit

To the Editor:

Sylva is a beautiful small town. It is its small-town charm and beautiful surroundings that brings people to Sylva and it is what keeps them here. As a 22-plus year resident of Sylva, it is my passionate belief that the fourstory, 84-apartment building project that is being proposed at 710 Skyland Drive does not fit with the statement in the 2040 Land Use Plan (2020) Overview that “Sylva is poised to take advantage of and build upon these assets by planning for and promoting growth while maintaining its small-town form and character.” While I understand that there may be a need for senior housing, plopping down a 4story building in the middle of a pasture and paving the entire area does not exactly fit within the style of this mostly single-family community. Perhaps a collection of duplexes or townhomes with some green space, even garden areas so that these seniors (of whom I am one) can remain active, would better suit this neighborhood, if indeed housing is needed.

As I write this letter, from 91 Magnolia St., I am looking directly at the proposed Skyland site from my front porch. Have you been to our neighborhood? Please come by! This quiet neighborhood, on the eastern edge within Sylva’s city limits is mostly comprised of single-family homes built in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Right now, I look out at a pasture that gets mowed a couple of times a year, some 80-foot tall pine trees, and through them a beautiful early 20th century home. These will be razed. In the background all around are mountains. There are no tall buildings within sight — or within city limits that I have noticed. It is almost within sight of the hospital, but not quite. Not even the hospital is four stories high.

Article II, Sec. 38-45, regarding Professional Business District regulations indicates that the maximum structure height is 40 feet, which doesn’t include four-story buildings. In the 2040 Sylva Land Use Plan (2020), this neighborhood is identified as an In-fill Neighborhood, which “are areas of existing low- (2 to 4 units per acre) to medium-density (4 to 12 units per acre) single-family residential uses.” Just this past year, that is how the town decided it wanted to grow in this area, not with multi-story apartments.

Traffic at the Skyland Drive/Chipper Curve intersection is already awful. The proposed entrance onto Allens Branch will funnel traffic right into that already difficult intersection. The surface of Allens Branch Road is in bad shape, with the edge along the creek crumbling in several places across from the proposed site. The watershed during rains turns Allens Branch Road and Magnolia Street into rivers and my yard into a pond in this “bottom.”

Add to this the light and noise pollution created by the 84 apartments that will be backing onto/looming over this quiet neighborhood. My newest neighbors just commented on the positive impact on sleep because of how quiet and dark it is at night. If this proposal is approved, it will never be dark here again. Our view will be of the side of a building instead of the side of a mountain.

If you will review the 2040 Sylva Land Use Plan (2020) policies below, I think that you will find that the current proposal doesn’t comply. • POLICY 4.2: Ensure that the density/intensity of development will be compatible with the general characteristics of the surrounding area in which development is located. • POLICY 5.2: Guide development to achieve appropriate transitions between different types of land uses.

The Conditional Use Permit application indicates that in order for the zoning board to “grant and issue” the permit they must find that “3. The use will not substantially injure the value of adjoining or abutting property…” and “4. The location and character of the proposed use will be in harmony with the area in which it is to be located and in general conformity with the development of the Town