“We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy” sets up a false choice. A republic elects its leaders instead of inheriting them. A representative democracy lets citizens choose those leaders. A constitution limits what government may do. The United States is all three at once, and political science counts representative systems as democracies. The slogan usually redefines democracy as direct mob rule, which is not what the word means.
The framers did build counter-majoritarian features: the Bill of Rights, equal Senate representation for every state, the Electoral College, and checks among the branches. None of that is in dispute. Those features qualify majority rule; they do not replace popular sovereignty as the principle underneath. When policy routinely diverges from national majorities, that is the constraints being worked, not the system working as intended. The gap is contested, not settled: efforts to widen voting access, curb gerrymandering, reform the Electoral College, and revisit the filibuster are attempts to realign practice with the democratic ideal. The slogan is most often heard in defense of the current arrangement. My position is that the arrangement is a disputed equilibrium worth recalibrating, and that majority rule remains the engine even with guardrails on it.