OH, LOOK! GOOD REPUBLICANS (NONE OF WHOM ARE IN OFFICE)!

Republicans want to put restrictions on Democratic voters wherever they can possibly get away with it, but Jon Ward of Yahoo News has decided to write a "yes, there are good Republicans" story, informing us that some party members are apprehensive about vote suppression.

As GOP lawmakers look to pass new voting restrictions, some conservatives are pushing back

There is rising unease among some conservatives about the increasing aggressiveness of Republicans in state legislatures to tighten election laws and erect obstacles to voting.

There is? Okay, let's see which Republicans are uneasy, according to Ward:

“Restricting who can vote by absentee ballot will actually detrimentally impact Republicans,” Erick Erickson, a conservative talk radio host in Georgia, told Yahoo News. “Take, for example, north Georgia. Republicans there love to vote by absentee, which is why the Georgia GOP pushed to get rid of excuses back in the mid-2000s.”

David Kochel, a Republican consultant who ran Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s successful reelection campaign last year, expressed reservations as well.

“That’s my fear. The problem is, we don’t have the data to know. I think these restrictions could come back to haunt the party, but we just don’t know enough,” he said.

Other dissident conservatives want to persuade the GOP that making it harder to vote gives it no partisan advantage, erodes its credibility and is inconsistent with conservative principles.

“Republicans are in a bad place, because I think they find themselves arguing, in essence, that there ought to be fewer voters, which is, in my view, wrong, and also the wrong place to be as a political matter,” said Yuval Levin, the director of social, cultural and constitutional studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Republicans are quite openly arguing that there ought to be fewer voters. Here's John Kavanaugh, a prominent Arizona state legislator, who's working on a bill to curb voting by Democrats:

"There's a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans," Kavanagh said. "Democrats value as many people as possible voting, and they're willing to risk fraud. Republicans are more concerned about fraud, so we don't mind putting security measures in that won't let everybody vote -- but everybody shouldn't be voting."

But notice something about the people quoted in the above excerpt from Ward's story? Not one of them holds elective office. Erickson does talk radio. Kochel is a consultant. Levin is the quintessential "reform conservative," someone who apparently makes a living describing as "Republican," or "conservative," ideas that perhaps 1% of elected Republicans and conservatives would entertain (a few Northeastern governors, maybe Adam Kinzinger, occasionally Mitt Romney).

Levin holds forth for ten paragraphs in Ward's story, even though, as far as I know, he's never had an idea embraced by the national Republican Party in two decades of pontificating.

Who else is quoted here?

The GOP “is hemorrhaging credibility by perpetuating the mythology that there was rampant fraud” in the 2020 election, said Josh Penry, a Colorado Republican consultant who was House minority leader in the state Legislature.

Another consultant. Does Ward quote any Republicans who are actual elected officials? Anyone who might run again in the future in a GOP primary?

Oh, here's an elected official commenting on the Democrats' voting rights bill:

And yet Republicans are already denouncing H.R.1 in the strongest terms. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said it was “written in hell by the devil himself.”

Well! That sure doesn't sound like pushback on the idea of vote suppression!

Don't even bother writing stories like this unless you can find elected officials who oppose what the party's overwhelming majority wants.