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On the eve of Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, the Oregon Republican Party released a statement condemning the 10 Republican members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump and aligning themselves with conspiracy theories on the insurrection of January 6 at the Capitol.
The declaration and accompanying resolutions – adopted by the party’s executive committee – were issued by the party establishment itself, not by elected lawmakers. However, the executive committee includes Becky Mitts, the chief of staff to Representative Mike Nearman, R-Independence, who was stripped of his committee duties after helping violent right-wing protesters enter the Capitol building on December 21, while it was closed to the public.
Chris Barreto, wife of former Rep. Greg Barreto, R-Cove is also a member of the executive committee, which is chaired by Bill Currier of the Village of Adair in Benton County and vice chaired by Tracy Honl of Hillsboro.
The party’s executive committee consists of its six-member leadership team, as well as congressional district presidents, vice-presidents and acting vice-presidents. Mark Shull, recently elected to the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners, is the party’s deputy vice-chairman in that county. He faces bipartisan calls to step down for his disparaging statements on social media about Black Lives Matter, Islam and transgender people.
The press release describes the Republican impeachment votes as a “deep betrayal”, and the impeachment vote itself as a “sham process” without investigation and “at odds with known and emerging facts.”
“This type of sham process has become the norm for Democrats, but no Republican should support or give in to such an abuse of our constitutional system,” Oregon Republican Party Chairman Bill Currier said in the statement. Press.
Members of the party’s leadership did not respond to calls for comment.
The set of resolutions passed by the executive committee also said that the transcript of Trump’s speech contradicted claims by Democrats that he had incited an insurgency. He called the insurgency a “sham operation” designed to discredit Trump and support Biden’s introduction of new national terrorism legislation, and cited a variety of right-wing pundits and publications who have argued the same theories.
“This provided the false motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democratic goal of seizing full power, in a chilling parallel with the burning of the German Reichstag in February 1933,” according to the resolutions.
The resolution also thanked U.S. Representative Cliff Bentz for challenging Pennsylvania presidential voters in one of his first acts as Oregon’s new Congressional Representative, and said U.S. Representative Kurt Schrader had described with precision impeachment as a “lynching”. The Oregon Democrat has since apologized profusely for the comment and has promised training on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Various Republican lawmakers have attempted to blame left-wing groups for the Capitol Riot. 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 he participated in. More generally, federal courts and investigators found no evidence of widespread fraud in the November election, although Trump continued to repeat those lies for two months and passed them on to his supporters at the rally in the morning. of the riot, urging 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 targeting several right-wing extremist groups that appeared to be more prepared and organized, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers. and three percent.
Portland-area pollsters and other observers said they were baffled by the strategy behind Tuesday’s statement by Republicans in Oregon, beyond calling the party’s base. However, they said, it perfectly reflected the growing schism of the Republican Party nationwide.
“It’s a really curious strategy for a political party that is so weak in the state right now to try to find a way to go back,” said John Horvick, a pollster at DHM Research. “Republicans haven’t won the governor’s mansion since Vic Atiyeh. They have won two races statewide in the past two decades. They are in the wilderness in the Legislature and they have spent the summer trying to recall Kate Brown.
“Maybe that represents their base to some extent, but it doesn’t make sense to me as a short, medium or long term strategy.”
About 26% of registered voters in Oregon are Republicans, compared with 36% as Democrats and 39% who identify as unaffiliated or otherwise. A CNN poll conducted by independent research firm SSRS and released on Sunday found that nationally three in four Republican voters do not believe Biden legitimately won the election. Previous Fox News polls returned similar numbers.
Jim Moore, a political scientist at Pacific University in Forest Grove, said the resolutions simply underscore the fact that the party leadership in Oregon and nationwide is still fully aligned with Trump, and that those elected to party positions over the past four years “had to be Trumpist.
Moore said it was interesting that this happened on a day when Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell publicly said the mob that stormed the capital was “provoked by the President and others. powerful ”and that“ the crowd was fed on lies ”.
Moore said party officials are generally much more to the right or left than the general electorate. But, he says, they may be more aligned to the right than usual now. He said that because Republicans had such low stability of candidate for office statewide, candidates tend to reflect more extreme views, such as Jo Rae Perkins, a follower of QAnon conspiracy theories who has won the Republican nomination to run. for the US Senate against Jeff Merkley. Merkley won the election easily, 57% to 39%, almost exactly the same margins Biden won in the presidential election in Oregon.
“Conspiracy theories seem like a perfectly reasonable way to go right now,” Moore said, “it will double down and appeal to your base. But to make the party grow, it’s a dead end.
– Ted Sickinger; [email protected]; 503-221-8505; @tedsickinger
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