THE SUPREME COURT WOULD RATHER BOIL THE FROG SLOWLY

I know it's a myth that a frog won't jump out of a pot of water if the water is boiled slowly, but the myth seems like the right metaphor for the Supreme Court's decision to (mostly) reject the "independent legislature" theory of state election regulation.

The Court represents the thinking of GOP establishmentarians. Prior to Donald Trump's attempt to steal the 2020 election, the mainstream GOP had a project that was working just fine for the party: a gradual tilting of election procedures in the party's favor, but rarely in a way that attracted the attention of most ordinary Americans. A voter ID law here, a few polling-place closures there, plus a lot of gerrymandering, much of it rubber-stamped by the Court, and, of course, a near-free-for-all in campaign finance -- it gave Republicans huge legislative majorities even in states that are close to 50-50 in party makeup (Wisconsin, North Carolina), which has generally meant that the House of Representatives is artificially skewed in favor of the GOP. This angers politically engaged Democrats, but most Americans pay no attention. It's a long game, and Republicans have been winning it.

Accepting the most radical version of the independent legislature theory would have meant running the risk that MAGA-addled Republican state legislators might tip elections to their party in a way even apolitical Americans would recognize as unfair. It's quite possible they'd have thrown out election results in one or more states where Democrats had clearly won. The GOP establishment knows that it can keep getting away with the non-Trumpian election finagling it's been engaged in for the past fifteen years or so, but something like that could really lead to a serious backlash. It would be too blatant -- a flash-boiling of the frog. There really might be mobs in the streets if Joe Biden won Wisconsin or Arizona and the legislature simply declared that he didn't. That could delegitimize the Republican Party and the Supreme Court that does the party's bidding.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court would prefer a one-party state just as much as MAGA would -- but they want to arrive at this outcome in a subtle way. So this ruling shouldn't be a surprise.