So what’s the real reason Republicans say we’re not a democracy, we’re a republic?

My view is they’re not mutually exclusive, we’re both. Probably looking for replies from progressives here, because it seems like I’ve heard or read lots of very different Republican explanations and I can’t remember any of them, it just seems like they were all pedantic bullshit. There must be some underlying issue that’s important to them. My guess is roughly that “democracy” carries the connotation that [i]everyone[/i] gets to vote, whereas in a republic maybe it could be considered acceptable to disenfranchise certain people deemed illegitimate (such as minorities and poor because they didn’t show an ID), but I don’t feel very confident in that hypothesis.