No. In a Republic the people are governed by laws. When we are led by votes or leaders we’ve voted for we are in a Democracy. When we are in a Republic with elected officials who are acting outside of or superior to the law we are in neither.
What if idiotic people elect Representatives to make laws and those laws crush liberty and create an environment where the people become even more idiotic (or more idiots are imported)?
It all comes down to incentives. As long as we have a system where leaders are elected for a short period of time and are able to amass huge sums of money on the largess of the public treasury, they will never have any allegiance to the people they “represent”.
They have no “buy in” to the long term success of the people they represent. As long as they can cook the books for 10 or 15 years to keep getting elected, engage in enough graft and corruption to set themselves and their children up for life, what does it matter what happens to the people?