Let us, for just a moment, pretend that Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia is a serious man. On Tuesday, the Republican lawmaker filed a bill that would, if signed into law, ban the Florida Democratic Party. That is, at least, the overall effect of his bill, which targets any party whose platform had “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”
The combative, hyperpartisan, single-minded focus on trolling — or “owning the libs” — that Ingoglia’s bill represents has become the Republican Party’s guiding ethos, if one can call it such a thing. This post-policy method of politicking is focused more on narrative than outcome. Bills are drafted not to become law but to get a rise out of the enemy and applause from the base at how thoroughly the opposition has been put into their place. It is a contemptible way of going about life, one that makes me feel a faint sadness for the GOP elected officials who are so damned, condemned to debase themselves in favor of spouting incendiary nonsense.
This is not a bill crafted by an idiot.
Every once in a while, though, one of their attempts at salience breaks through, and I find myself almost impressed. Such is the case with the framing of the bill that Ingoglia puts forward, called SB 1248. This is not a bill crafted by an idiot. The text does not mention the Democratic Party directly. That would be likely found unconstitutional as a bill of attainder, a technical term for a law that targets a specific person or group for punishment. A federal court in 1973 tossed out an Arizona state law that blocked the Communist Party from organizing, as well as a related federal statute, on those grounds.
And yet it is clearly intended to target the Democratic Party by singling out advocacy of slavery in its platform. The 1848 party platform, for example, stated “that all efforts of the Abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take…
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