On the eve of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, the Oregon Republican Party issued a statement condemning the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump and aligning with conspiracy theories about the January 6 uprising in the building. Capitol.
The declaration and accompanying resolutions – approved by the party’s executive committee – were issued by the party’s own establishment, not by elected legislators. However, the executive committee includes Becky Mitts, deputy Mike Nearman’s chief of staff, R-Independence, who was stripped of his duties on the committee after helping violent right-wing protesters to enter the Capitol building on December 21, when he was closed to the public.
Chris Barreto, wife of former MP Greg Barreto, R-Cove is also a member of the executive committee, which is chaired by Bill Currier of Adair Village in Benton County and vice-chaired by Tracy Honl of Hillsboro.
The party’s executive committee includes its six-member leadership team, as well as congressional district presidents, vice presidents and alternate vice presidents. Mark Shull, recently elected to the Clackamas County Commissioners Council, is the alternate vice president for the party in that county. He is facing bipartisan calls to resign for his derogatory statements on social media about Black Lives Matter, Islam and trans people.
The press release described the Republican votes in favor of impeachment as a “profound betrayal” and the impeachment vote itself as a “fictional process” without investigation and “in contradiction to the known and emerging facts”.
“This kind of false process has become the norm for Democrats, but no Republican should support or give in to such abuse of our constitutional system,” said Oregon Republican Party President Bill Currier in the press release.
Members of the party’s leadership team did not return calls seeking comment.
The set of resolutions passed by the executive committee also said that the transcript of Trump’s speech contradicts Democrats’ claims that he incited the insurrection. He called the insurrection a “false flag operation” designed to discredit Trump and support Biden’s introduction of new domestic anti-terrorism legislation, and he cited a variety of experts and right-wing publications who developed the same theories.
“This provided the false motivation for President Trump’s impeachment to advance the Democratic goal of taking full power, in a frightening parallel with the burning of the German Reichstag in February 1933,” the resolutions said.
The resolution also thanked US Representative Cliff Bentz for challenging Pennsylvania presidential voters in one of his first acts as Oregon’s newest representative in Congress, and said US Representative Kurt Schrader accurately described the impeachment as a ” lynching “. The Oregon Democrat has since profusely apologized for the comment and promised to receive training on diversity, equality and inclusion.
Several Republican lawmakers tried to blame leftist groups for the Capitol revolt. The FBI originally said there was no indication that this was the case, although a liberal Utah activist was arrested last week on federal charges of his participation. More broadly, courts and federal investigators found no evidence that there was widespread fraud in the November election, although Trump continued to repeat these lies for two months, and passed them on to his supporters at the rally the morning of the riot, asking for them to march on the capital and “fight like hell” against the “stolen” election.
The Justice Department has arrested more than 100 people since the January 6 riot, and the Washington Post reported on Monday that the FBI was zeroing out several right-wing extremist groups that seemed to be more prepared and organized, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and three percent.
Portland area researchers and other observers said they were intrigued by the strategy behind Tuesday’s statement by Oregon Republicans, as well as appealing to the party base. However, they said, this perfectly reflected the growing schism in the Republican Party nationally.
“It is a very curious strategy for a political party that is so weak in the state now to try to find a way back,” said John Horvick, a researcher at DHM Research. “Republicans have not won the governor’s mansion since Vic Atiyeh. They have won two state races in the past two decades. They are in the desert in the Legislature and spent the summer trying to remember Kate Brown.
“Maybe it represents your base to some extent, but it makes no sense to me as a short, medium or long term strategy.”
About 26% of registered voters in Oregon are Republicans, against 36% as Democrats and 39% who identify themselves as non-affiliates or others. A CNN poll conducted by independent polling firm SSRS, released on Sunday, found that, nationally, three out of four Republican voters do not believe that Biden legitimately won the election. Previous Fox News surveys have returned similar numbers.
Jim Moore, a political scientist at Pacific University in Forest Grove, said the resolutions simply highlight the fact that party leadership in Oregon and nationally is still perfectly aligned with Trump, and that people elected to party positions in the past four years “needed to be Trumpist.”
Moore said it was interesting that this happened on a day when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said publicly that the crowd that invaded the capital was “provoked by the president and other powerful people” and that “the crowd was fed with lies “.
Moore said that party officials are generally far more to the right or left than the general constituency. But, he said, they may be more aligned with the right than normal now. He said that because Republicans have a weak group of candidates for state office, people who run tend to reflect more extreme views, like Jo Rae Perkins, a follower of QAnon conspiracy theories who won the Republican nomination to run for the US Senate. against Jeff Merkley. Merkley won the election easily, by 57% to 39%, almost exactly the same margins that Biden won in the presidential elections in Oregon.
“Conspiracy theories seem to be a perfectly reasonable way to go now,” said Moore, “is doubling and appealing to your base. But as a way to increase the party, it is a dead end. “
– Ted Sickinger; [email protected]; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger