Any­one who has spent time attempt­ing to under­stand the pol­i­tics of the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty knows that Repub­li­cans spend an awful lot of time lis­ten­ing to (and tak­ing their cues from) mil­i­tant, right wing ini­tia­tive prof­i­teer Tim Eyman, who has become obsessed late­ly with gut­ting Wash­ing­ton’s cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule and replac­ing it with rule by the few.

Eyman is demand­ing that leg­is­la­tors vote to change the Con­sti­tu­tion to require that any bill that rais­es or even recov­ers rev­enue for the state trea­sury receive a two-thirds vote on the floor of each house of the Leg­is­la­ture — oth­er­wise, it would die. Such a change to our plan of gov­ern­ment would per­ma­nent­ly trans­fer pow­er from the many to a few, as this pic­togram illustrates:

Don’t mess with our Constitution

House and Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have tak­en up Eyman’s cause and are beat­ing the drum for an amend­ment, along with Eyman’s friend Jason Merci­er, who works for John Carl­son’s Wash­ing­ton Pol­i­cy Cen­ter. Eyman and Repub­li­cans insist that alter­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion to sab­o­tage Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 would be a good thing.

If super­ma­jor­i­ty require­ments are so won­der­ful and lead to bipar­ti­san com­pro­mise, why not require super­ma­jor­i­ty votes for every­thing? (And, for that mat­ter, why stop at two-thirds? What about three-fourths… or nine-tenths?)

Repub­li­cans don’t seem to have answers to these questions.

Last autumn, I urged Carl­son and oth­er back­ers of I‑1366 to imag­ine the shoe being on the oth­er foot. What if it were pro­gres­sives who were propos­ing requir­ing super­ma­jor­i­ty votes for cer­tain actions? Would Repub­li­cans be on board with that? (We can’t imag­ine that they would be.)

Repub­li­cans have made it clear over the last few days that they have an extreme, aggres­sive agen­da for Wash­ing­ton State. Jamal Raad, the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Direc­tor, has been keep­ing an eye on the bills that Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors have been fil­ing for this year’s short ses­sion. This morn­ing, he sent out a com­pi­la­tion of some of them to the press:

HB 2291 — Rolling Back The Min­i­mum Wage. Repub­li­cans want to account for health ben­e­fits when cal­cu­lat­ing the min­i­mum wage rate and pro­vide a “youth wage” which would cut the min­i­mum wage for thou­sands of workers.

HB 2294 - Defund­ing Planned Par­ent­hood. Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton State are join­ing the nation­al Repub­li­can mania of defund­ing Planned Parenthood.

HB 2325 — Math, Sci­ence and…Guns? Repub­li­cans want to bring the NRA into our high schools at tax­pay­er expense to teach our stu­dents about their far-right inter­pre­ta­tion of the 2nd Amendment.

SB 6158 — Raf­fling Off Guns With­out Back­ground Checks. This bill would allow con­ser­v­a­tive and Repub­li­can polit­i­cal groups to give out guns to their mem­bers at fundrais­ers with­out vot­er-approved uni­ver­sal back­ground checks.

SB 6173 — Ban­ning Poli­cies To Lim­it Green­house Gas Emis­sions. One of the State Sen­ate’s lead recip­i­ents of cam­paign cash from the fos­sil fuel indus­try, Doug Erick­sen, a Don­ald Trump sup­port­er, is spon­sor­ing leg­is­la­tion that would block action to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from cli­mate change.

HB 2293 — Award­ing Elec­toral Votes To Repub­li­cans. Know­ing they are most like­ly nom­i­nat­ing a rad­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive like Don­ald Trump for Pres­i­dent who has no shot at win­ning here in Wash­ing­ton state, Repub­li­cans are try­ing to sneak a way to award elec­toral votes to the GOP nom­i­nee for pres­i­dent even when they even­tu­al­ly lose.

None of these bills stand a chance of becom­ing law or even pass­ing the Leg­is­la­ture, because Democ­rats cur­rent­ly con­trol the gov­er­nor’s man­sion and the House. How­ev­er, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic House major­i­ty has been whit­tled down to a mar­gin of just one vote, and Repub­li­cans are mak­ing a play for the House in 2016. They’re also look­ing to main­tain their hold on the Senate.

If they’re suc­cess­ful, at this time next year, they’ll con­trol both hous­es of the Leg­is­la­ture for the first time in decades — and they’d be able to pass all of the above bills with all or near­ly all of their mem­bers march­ing in lockstep.

(Arti­cle II, Sec­tion 22 of Wash­ing­ton’s Con­sti­tu­tion says bills pass by major­i­ty vote, and if you can count to fifty in the House and twen­ty-five in the Sen­ate, then you can get a bill sent to the gov­er­nor’s desk. It’s been this way since statehood.)

But what if Tim Eyman’s rules were in effect for the afore­men­tioned bills? What if a two-thirds vote were the stan­dard for pas­sage? Why, in that case, Democ­rats could block them… all of them, even if they only had a sub­ma­jor­i­ty of each house of the Leg­is­la­ture (and not a major­i­ty). It would­n’t mat­ter how suc­cess­ful Repub­li­cans were at win­ning in swing dis­tricts in 2016. They would­n’t be able to imple­ment their agen­da on their own, because Democ­rats would have a leg­isla­tive veto over them.

Major­i­ty rule is good for every­one — Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans alike — but unfor­tu­nate­ly, this seems to be lost on the Repub­li­cans cur­rent­ly serv­ing in the Leg­is­la­ture. We won­der: How would Repub­li­cans like Bruce Dammeier and Drew MacEwen feel about a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment requir­ing a two-thirds vote for bills to roll back the min­i­mum wage, over­ride exec­u­tive orders by the gov­er­nor, or allow guns to be pur­chased with no ques­tions asked? Do Repub­li­cans still think super­ma­jori­ties are a good idea in those cas­es? And if not — why not?