Imagine that you are a modern day James Madison. You fear the capriciousness of mobs. You want to create a political system that protects property and the best elements of society from the tyranny of the majority. How do you do it?
You would start by giving a disproportionate amount of voting power to property owners and people with education, of course.
Many members of the current GOP openly support minority rule. The problem with the classical defense of creating obstacles to majorities, however, is that the plan I have just described would give control of the country to the left-leaning, cosmopolitan business and intellectual elites the GOP despises. How about them apples?
The GOP scheme isn’t actually to somehow implement anti-democratic opinions of the Founding Fathers; it is to limit the franchise to “real Americans,” which of course means predominantly poorly-educated, white working and lower middle class Christians. They aren’t the successors to some sort of enlightened 18th century planter aristocracy. They’re average America in action.