Today I put to you that if it is, indeed, a laboratory, the State of Oregon is in the process of becoming Dr. Mengele's lab.
Let's start here; the Republican Party has made itself widely detested in Oregon.
We are, in large part, what popular culture says we are; a bunch of plaid-shirted, granola-addicted hippies. But in an even larger part we are what I saw back in the Eighties when I was posted abroad; we are Panama.
Just like República de Panamá, Oregon is effectively two separate states.
There's the city - Portland - that is predominantly liberal and Democratic. And the "country", the rural areas outside the metro area, which are largely "conservative" and Republican. Yes, there are some blue islands - smaller cities like Eugene, Salem, and Bend - but the demographic hasn't really budged since I moved here nearly thirty years ago. Slightly more than half of Oregon lives within a thirty-minute drive of downtown Portland, and we vote Left (or left-ish). We broke for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in 2016, and Hillary in the general.
The remainder lives in the hustings and votes Trump.
And, make no mistake - the Oregon GOP was Trump before Trump was Trump. We had a long period where the proto-teabaggers ate away the GOP's brain from the inside. We had tax revolters and Christopaths and ammosexuals that became the animating force of the Oregon GOP and were, as such, so utterly neofeudal and theocratic and insane with the sort of guns-God-gays cult insanity that now rules the national GOP that they turned the stomach of most of the rest of Oregon outside the real cows-outnumber-the-people yick-a-hoo rural fiefdoms. Oregon has become a deep-blue-purple state not so much because Oregonians are commies, but because the "conservatives" here became red-meat, right-wing whackaloons along with the rest of their Party, and the folks who hadn't drunk the Kool-ade were horrified and repelled.
To the point where the GOP is now a pathetic appendix in the Oregon House and a minority in the Senate.
This is the direct result, let me reiterate not of some sort of weed-induced liberal coup, but of the Oregon GOP's utter batshit teabaggery. The Republicans here have stood for things that even fairly "moderate conservatives" couldn't stomach. They've gutted the tax system and starved the schools. They've let the roads and pipelines go to hell. They've completely resisted even the most mild and sensible firearm regulation. They've tried again and again - since we have the "ballot measure" direct democracy system - to push the queers back in the closet and the rule of law on women's wombs.
They're bog-standard deplorable Trumpkins, in other words.
Here's a perfect example; this is a sample of what's on the Oregon legislature docket for this session:
House Bill 3427, a taxation measure that would fund education through imposition of a "corporate activity tax".
House Bill 2007, which would establish deadlines for cleaner trucks and require large state public construction projects to use vehicles with cleaner engines.
House Bill 2016, a pro-labor bill that would block public access to public employees’ information and lock many requirements that are currently negotiated during collective bargaining into state law.
House Bill 2020, a far-reaching cap and trade plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon.
House Bill 3063, which passed the House on Monday and would eliminate loopholes in Oregon’s vaccination mandate.
Senate Bill 750, which Republicans described in their document as the “bounty hunter bill.” It would authorize lawyers to enforce public contracting, minimum wage and other labor laws that currently only state labor regulators and the Department of Justice can enforce, according to a state document.
Senate Bill 978, a package of gun law changes including penalties for some gun owners who fail to lock up their weapons and a provision to allow gun dealers to refuse to sell guns to people younger than 21.
House Bill 2014, which passed the House earlier this year and would lift the cap on damages juries can award for so-called “pain and suffering.”
None of these are particularly looney-left, and several of them - in particular HB3427, HB2007, HB3062, and SB978 - are favored, and favors strongly, by anywhere between a bare majority to a supermajority of Oegonians.
In a functioning republic the legislature would debate these issues but the majority would rule. The whole IDEA of a republic is that the government acts on the citizen's convictions as expressed through the ballot box.
The Oregon GOP could "debate" - but would lose - on these measures because, well, their convictions have been such an anathema to the citizens that their place in government has been reduced to a cipher.
Because a majority of the people of Oregon ain't buying what the GOP was and is selling.
The Republicans' solution?
They've run away.
Seriously.
The GOP legislators have fled the state and effectively stopped the legislature's business by denying the Senate a quorum.
Now...this isn't just a GOP thing. When the Republicans controlled the legislature (which they did until about a decade ago) the Democrats did something similar when the GOP introduced something fairly draconian - IIRC it was an abortion-restriction bill - and forced the GOP to back off.
The difference here is that Oregon in general doesn't give a shit about abortion. Anti-abortion ballot measures have died by big losses every time the bible-bangers have gotten them on the ballot.
This is the Oregon GOP seeing the "will of the people" and telling The People; "Fuck you!"
And what does our Oregon paper of record do about this?
Does the front page of the Oregonian's online newspaper open with the screaming banner headline: "Oregon GOP STILL thwarting the People's Will!!!"?
Ummm...no.
You wanna know how your political will is getting fucked by Oregon's Republican minority?
You gotta hunt through the below-the-fold "politics" section, and do it yourself. If you're a "low-information" (i.e. about 85% of the public) voter? You're either gonna give up long before that or not even start.
This - this - is how you take a republic into that laboratory...and inject it with a whomping dose of poison, and fucking kill it.
You ensure that a small group of cult dead-enders place their own fanaticism above the public weal. You ensure that the "news media" either doesn't report it at all, or, when it does, "both-sides" the shit out of it so Joe and Mary Lunchpail can't tell that it's one side that's shooting the hostage. And then you wait, while the bulk of the public doesn't understand why the things they think that a good government is supposed to do - like keep the schools open and keep nutters away from firearms and regulate dangers like dirty air and filthy water - don't get done.
And, eventually, the People give up on government, and either don't care, or openly welcome the Man on Horseback that comes promising that the trains will run on time.
While all eyes are drawn to the freak show in the White House, out here in Oregon we're giving you an experiment. An experiment in terror, frankly, that shows how easy it is to kill a republic.
Nearly 150 years before Justice Brandis concluded that the states would provide lab rats for the American Experiment another pretty well-known public figure observed that the important thing about republics wasn't getting them, but keeping them.
That's not looking particularly good out here in the great Northwest.
1 comment:
Thank you.
Your description of the political geography of OR was about what I thought (I saw "Green Room" too) but I did not know about them hamstringing the business of government.
Yikes.
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