Can I republish an article that was previously published in a lower-quality journal?

No. If you do, it will enrage your publishers, and one of them may be forced to retract the published content to avoid copyright concerns.

Furthermore, news will spread among publications that you are double-dipping. (Academics is like a little town—everyone knows everyone else in a small field.) Once you've established that reputation, many editors will reject your future submissions outright, without even sending them out for anonymous peer review.