Consent of the governed? Bah! Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has seen it in North Carolina (2016). And Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin (2018). Voters’ choices pitted both Democrats against hostile Republican-dominated state legislatures. Before even taking office, Republicans in lame duck sessions, with support from outgoing Republican Govs. Pat McCrory and Scott Walker, stripped powers from the incoming Democratic governors. If Jan. 6 and GOP election-denying in its aftermath did not clue you in, political niceties such as respecting the will of voters is not part of the Republican playbook. Raw power is. Richard Nixon torpedoed the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 to win his. Operatives for Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1980 delayed for months the release of Americans held hostage in Iran ahead of his election and inauguration. Power mattered more. Neither paid a personal price for the resulting deaths and extended captivity of Americans. Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, reminds Slate readers that Republican power stripping of the sort deployed against Cooper and Evers has not stopped. After disturbing photos appeared in 2020 of Sen. Mitch McConnell’s visit to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the Kentucky senator pressured the GOP-controlled legislature to strip the governor (then a Democrat) of the power to appoint a successor without restrictions in the case of a vacancy. That power resides in the governor in 35 states. McConnell “urged and the Kentucky legislature took the step of changing that state’s law—overriding the veto of the governor to do…