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.

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DunningKruger · 61-69, M

The difference between a republic and a democracy is the extent to which the citizens have any control over their government.

A republic requires a set of rules for the government to follow, such as a constitution. While some people might argue that the people have to have a say in the governmental process, technically a republic doesn't require that. A republic could theoretically have a system for selecting legislatures and executives and whatnot that didn't involve the citizenry at all. For example, in the US originally, senators were not elected, and even today, the president is not selected by popular vote; the members of the electoral college can select whomever they want to be president without regard to what the people vote for.

A democracy, in contrast, requires that the will of the people guides the government. In a direct democracy, that would mean the citizens would need to vote for every individual law that was proposed, which might work in a small village but probably would be cumbersome in a large nation.

What we have in the US can best be described as a representative democracy, a system that takes some ideas that might be called "republican" and some ideas that might be called "democratic" and smooshes them together into the buttfuckery we enjoy today.