Republican election subversion: Update 3

The New York Times reports on Rusty Bowers, speaker of the Arizona House. Bowers killed a state bill that would have given the Republican-controlled Legislature the power to unilaterally overturn the results of an election. Arizona Republican radical right autocrats are very unhappy with Bowers and want him out of power. The NYT writes:

The bill’s sponsor, John Fillmore — who boasts of being the most conservative member of the Arizona State Legislature — told us in an interview that Bowers’s tactics amounted to saying: “I am God. I control the rules. You will do what I say.”

Fillmore’s bill would have eliminated early voting altogether and mandated that all ballots be counted by hand.

Bowers did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but his public comments indicate a deep unease with how Trump and his base of supporters have promoted wild theories about election fraud and have pushed legislation that voting rights groups say amounts to an undemocratic, nationwide power grab.

“We gave the authority to the people,’’ Bowers told Capitol Media Services, an Arizona outlet, earlier this week. “And I’m not going to go back and kick them in the teeth.’’

Bowers’s resistance to the shifting currents of Republican politics has made him a frequent target of the pro-Trump right.

Last year, when he survived an attempt to recall him from the Legislature, he complained about the aggressive tactics of the Trump supporters behind it.

​​“They’ve been coming to my house and intimidating our family and our neighborhood,” Bowers said, describing how mobile trucks drove by his home and called him a pedophile over a loudspeaker.

Fillmore, who insisted he was willing to bargain over any aspects of his bill, said he was “disappointed that members of my caucus do not have the testicular fortitude” to stand up to Bowers.

But he hinted at moves afoot to remove the speaker, whom he accused of sabotaging what he said was a good-faith effort to rein in voting practices that, in his view, have gone too far.

“I’m an old-school person. I do not go calmly. I do not go quietly,” Fillmore warned. “I believe Republican voters are solidly in line with me.” (emphasis added)

This is more evidence of the aggressive authoritarianism and detachment from reality and reason of most Republicans. The autocratic-plutocratic-Christian theocratic GOP is dead serious about subverting elections and installing radical right Republicans in elected offices.