Black Bart owns the town's only silver mine. His cattle have first dibs on the river, and they shit upstream of the city. He also owns the saloon, the bordello and the newspaper. He also has the judge and the sheriff in his pocket. The last thing he wants is a US Marshall riding into Dodge to clean the place up.

The GOP would have you believe the big bad gummint wants to take over everything. What they're really scared of is the local boss will finally have to be accountable for his crimes and corruption.

It's the age-old Magna Carta Malarkey. Sure, King John may have been a tyrant and an incompetent, but do you really think the barons gave a shit about the rights and freedoms of their serfs? No, all they really cared about was running their fiefdoms as profitably as possible without any supervision and not paying their fair share of taxes.