With a newly emboldened Republican Party poised to take over the federal government and much of the nation, the question of what kind of party it will be going forward looms large.

Will it continue down a radical-populist MAGA path that ignores laws it deems inconvenient and attempts to overturn any voting outcome it doesn’t like? Or will it return to the fold of responsible American politics, in which ideological disputes play out within normal systems of democracy and law that all sides agree to adhere to?

A microcosm of this tension will unfold in the Missouri House in the new year, as the Republican supermajority chooses its new speaker. Until recently, it was a foregone conclusion the nod would go to Rep. Jonathan Patterson, R-Lee’s Summit, a relative moderate in a state party that has become anything but.

However, a late challenge for the speakership has arisen from hard-right Rep. Justin Sparks, R-Wildwood. In a Facebook video explaining his opposition, Sparks criticizes Patterson for saying before Missouri voters’ passage last week of a landmark abortion-rights amendment, “We have to respect the law.”

“That’s not what the leader of the Republican caucus should be saying,” counters Sparks — neatly if unintentionally summing up the anti-democracy, anti-rule-of-law mindset that infects too much of today’s GOP.

Patterson was tapped by the Republican caucus in September 2023 to take over House leadership in 2025. Because of the overwhelming majority the caucus enjoys, the full House vote for speaker this January would normally be a mere formality. But Sparks’ announcement of a challenge means all of Missouri will get to watch a showdown between two competing brands of Republicanism.

In his Facebook announcement video, Sparks, a member of the extremist House Freedom Caucus, takes Patterson to task on several issues, including Patterson’s vote against legislation to prohibit transgender treatments for minors. Patterson, a surgeon, has said he believes there should be exceptions to that prohibition based on case-by-case details — a medically reasonable standard that most in Patterson’s party today reject. As House majority leader, Patterson nonetheless allowed debate on the legislation, which passed.

But the main focus of Sparks’ condemnation of Patterson is regarding Amendment 3, the statewide ballot measure that voters approved Nov. 5 restoring reproductive rights as they existed under Roe v. Wade. It effectively invalidates the almost complete abortion ban that Missouri’s political leaders imposed after the fall of Roe in mid-2022.

The measure restoring abortion rights passed last week with almost 52% of the statewide vote. This in a state that, on the same ballot, overwhelmingly returned to power the Republican legislative supermajority that instituted the ban in the first place — not to mention the former president whose U.S. Supreme Court appointments made the ban possible.

In other words, even dyed-in-the-wool Republican voters in good standing understood that this cruel ban, which made no exceptions for rape or incest survivors, was an unreasonable infringement by the state on the bodily autonomy of half its residents.

You’d think GOP leaders, faced with such clear evidence of being out of touch with even their own base on this issue, would change course. Patterson’s pre-election advice to heed whatever the voters decide displayed exactly that kind of appropriate deference to the ballot.

Sparks’ rebellion comes down to the rejection of that deference. His declaration that the incoming speaker must “tackle Amendment 3” is vague enough to ask: Just what does it look like to “tackle” a constitutional amendment that was approved by well over half the voters? His claim of being motivated by a desire to “represent the will of the people” suggests a novel notion of what constitutes that. Does he mean the will of 48% of the people?

Under one-party rule, which is effectively what Missouri has right now, it’s more important than ever that the ruling party respects the systems of democracy — including (and perhaps especially) when those systems yield outcomes the rulers don’t like. Missouri House Republicans will demonstrate whether they understand that principle with their choice of speaker next year.

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