{"id":37620,"date":"2019-06-22T02:21:45","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T02:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37620"},"modified":"2019-06-22T02:21:45","modified_gmt":"2019-06-22T02:21:45","slug":"gop-has-gone-mad-in-the-state-of-my-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=37620","title":{"rendered":"GOP has gone mad in the state of my birth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Oregon Republicans used to comprise a sane lot of politicians, folks who actually knew how to govern and they did it well.<\/p>\n

The late Gov. Tom McCall, a Republican, is a legendary figure in Oregon. So is the late Sen. Mark Hatfield, another GOP stalwart. Oregon had a Republican secretary of state, Clay Myers, who was known to work well with Democrats.<\/p>\n

These days the Republican Party in Oregon — the state where I was born and spent the first 34 years of my life — has gone bonkers.<\/p>\n

They comprise 12 members of the Oregon Senate. The rest of the 30-member body comprises Democrats. The Oregon Senate needs 20 members present, a quorum, to do business.<\/p>\n

The state’s Republican Senate caucus dislikes a cap-and-trade bill — an environmentally friendly bill that aims to cut carbon emissions — that they all have disappeared. They aren’t reporting for work. The Senate can’t do any business.<\/p>\n

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, has dispatched the state police to look for the missing senators. She wants to round up enough of them to force the Senate to vote on the emissions bill.<\/p>\n

Here is where it gets really weird, man. At least one GOP senator, Brian Boquist, is threatening to kill<\/em> any trooper who seeks to take him into custody to bring him back to work.<\/p>\n

As CNN reported<\/a> on what Boquist told a Portland TV station: “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”\u00a0<\/em>Yep. There’s an implied threat of violence there, right? Of course there is!<\/p>\n

I began my journalism career in Oregon in 1976. I didn’t get to cover the Legislature in those days, although I certainly reported on the impact of legislation on the community I served as a reporter and later an editor. Nothing like this ever occurred.<\/p>\n

Then again, that was a time when Republicans and Democrats actually worked together in state government and actually got things done for the benefit of those of us they served.<\/p>\n\n

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Oregon Republicans used to comprise a sane lot of politicians, folks who actually knew how to govern and they did it well. The late Gov. Tom McCall, a Republican, is a legendary figure in Oregon. So is the late Sen. Mark Hatfield, another GOP stalwart. Oregon had a Republican secretary of state, Clay Myers, who … Continue reading GOP has gone mad in the state of my birth<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[8716,862,3443,3446],"class_list":["post-37620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-cap-and-trade-bill","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-oregon-gop","tag-oregon-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37622,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37620\/revisions\/37622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}