Jackson County GOP: Conspiracy theories, extremism, and election denial.
We needed leadership.
Randy Sparacino, candidate for Oregon State Senate, is Missing in Action.
The Jackson County Republican Party laid down its marker this summer. It passed a resolution echoing Trump and "in solidarity with the Texas GOP convention" stating vigorous denial of the 2020 election."We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected."
This resolution created an opportunity and a problem for local Republican candidates. The opportunity was for candidates to distinguish themselves from the conspiracy theorists, election denialists, and extremists who justify overthrowing American elections. It would be an opportunity for candidates to acknowledge that voting by mail works. It is the procedure that has been in place for two decades in Oregon, and under which every Oregon Republican officeholder holds office. It would create the opportunity to look reasonable to the broad electorate of non-affiliated persuadable voters. It would be an opportunity to defend the democratic process and the American tradition of peaceful transfer of power. It would be an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and courage, by doing the core job of political leaders of telling the truth to their constituents about their government. There is a lot of upside.
The downside is that some portion of Republican voters just don't want to hear it. They want their Republican candidates to echo Donald Trump, even if what he argues is self-serving, undemocratic, dangerous, and contradicted by audits, recounts, and investigations by people in his own administration.
 |
| Disappointment |
Sparacino's behavior is a red flag. Trump argued that state legislatures are free to--and should--override the popular presidential vote in their states and award the electoral votes to the Republican on their own authority. Because Oregon votes by mail, Oregon legislators have a ready-made justification within GOP circles for saying they doubt, and therefore are free to overturn, the election result. There is a growing national GOP movement to place election deniers into positions where they can overrule an election--county clerks, secretaries of state, governors, and state legislators. Elected Republicans will get enormous pressure to stay loyal to their party and throw electoral votes to the Republican, whatever the actual vote. Legislators in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania experienced it. Governors and secretaries of state in Arizona and Georgia did as well. If he becomes a state senator, Sparacino will face that pressure.
Why would I suspect he would bow to that pressure? Because he is bowing to it right now. Surely Sparacino knows full well that his local party leaders went wacko. But he stays silent. If he doesn't show courage and integrity now, why should we expect it later if he is in the state senate? Today he is reluctant to disappoint some local Central Committee people who got carried away. In the Oregon senate he might get a call from Donald Trump telling him he needs to come through for the team.
Sparacino is the most prominent Republican candidate in Southern Oregon. His silence and fence-straddling lets his party's resolution be the announced position of local Republicans. There could be an alternative message, but that would require Sparacino to show the courage and character we expect in a leader.
He is lying low.
[Note: To receive this blog daily by email go to https://petersage.substack.com Subscribe. The blog is free and always will be.]
10 comments:
When a black guy with a funny name was elected president twice, Republicans realized they needed to expand their appeal, so they became an asylum for such diverse groups as white nationalists, neo-Nazis and the KKK. It paid off. In 2016 their candidate, whose only political experience was spreading lies about Obama, became president (thanks to the electoral college overruling the will of the people – again).
Now that the inmates have taken over the asylum, crazy is their new normal: climate change is a hoax, Russian election meddling is fake news, the pandemic is no big deal, the election was stolen, etc. As the saying goes, “shit rolls downhill.” Soon the Oregon Republican Party was issuing a resolution declaring the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump’s Chumps to be a “false flag operation.” Then the Jackson County Republicans joined with Texas and Idaho in officially declaring Biden an “illegitimate president.”
The first thing Cliff Bentz did on arriving in Washington was to join the conspirators in trying to overthrow the election. Sparacino isn’t talking about it. His silence speaks volumes.
I'm reminded of the pack of hyenas encircling the water buffalo.
Every once in a while one jumps out and takes a bite and then jumps back, then another, then another until finally they all rush in.
Ah, isn't nature amazing?
To repurpose Hemingway's quote about bankruptcy, "How did you lose your democracy? Gradually, then suddenly"
Sparacino is NOT the most prominent Republican candidate in Southern Oregon.
Jackson County Commissioners Colleen Roberts and Rick Dyer are both running for re-election, and both are much more prominent Republicans than Sparacino.
Yes, Roberts and Dyer are both prominent and both are hiding out. Because our County Clerk has integrity and professionalism, she would be successful in stopping Roberts and Dyer from playing some election-denial trick here in this county. She has far, far more credibility than they do.
Sparacino, however, would have a vote in the Oregon state senate. He and other senators, especially in a majority, but even in a minority might file lawsuits and objections which might claim the Oregon election won by a Democrat is fatally flawed by being a mail-in ballot. That might give "legal fiction" cover to a GOP Oregon congressman to try to stop counting Oregon's electoral votes. GOP copngressman Cliff Bentz did exactly that with Pennsylvania's vote, when that vote was audited, subject to multiple protests, judicially found to be a legal vote by Pennsylvania's own Supreme Court, which presumably knows Pennsylvania law. Bentz voted no anyway. Republicans who tolerate election cheating in 2020 and 2022 will likely do it again in 2024. Sparacino is knuckling under to the minicule pressure of a few wacko partisans in the local GOP. Think how he would react when one of his $10,000 donors called him to tell him he should not disappoint them allowing Oregon's electoral votes to go to the wrong guy. The story is that the local GOP people were so negligible and crazy that they can be ignored. Why bother responding to a proclamation by nobodies? If that is how they feel, then I ask the question, why be intimidated into silence by "nobodies?" I had had higher hopes for Sparacino. Maybe, he shows courage and leadership in other parts of his life. Maybe he was a good cop. Maybe he is a good husband. He is a very disappointing and cynical public leader. I am sure that in his heart he knows he is making a cynical and cowardly move here. I don't doubt campaign advisors are telling him to keep mum. "Don't disturb the crazies in the base. just mumble and keep mum." So, he is making his choice. He gets credit for being smart and cynical as a player of the political game. Enjoy that credit and praise from campaign advisors. Meanwhile pay the price for that. The price is the guilty knowledge that he is being "smart"instead of being conscientious and acting with integrity. That won't age well.
Sage, let me give you a tip.
The Jackson County Republicans organization does not represent the majority of Republicans in Jackson County. The Jackson County Republican Board was elected by Precinct representatives, which number about 17 for the entire County. They are gadflies, and most are 80 years old. The Precinct representatives don't represent the general public. They are hacks that nobody pays attention to. They voted for a Board that doesn't represent anyone. No Republican politician in the Valley cares what the Jackson County Republican Board thinks. Most politicians don't even know who is on the Board. The Board members are nobodies with crazy opinions. Who cares what they think? I highly doubt that Randy Sparacino has ever even communicated with them.
Maybe the GOP Central Committee is irrelevant and the people on it discredited "nobodies." The candidates are running with the name REPUBLICAN next to their names. The committee purports to represent Republican positions. They published it. If Sparacino, et al. didn't want the Republican brand they could have run as an independent or gotten onto the ballot by petition with just signatgures. They didn't. They said they are Republicans. The public draws inferences about the candidates' beliefs by that brand. I would have thought that Sparacino and the others would have wanted to protect the GOP brand, or their own. Why don't they? The truth is that those "nobodies" put out a point of view shared by a whole lot of Republicans who are showing themselves across the country to be in no mood to tolerate candidates who disagree with Trump on the election. My original title for my blog post was "If you like Trump you will love Randy Sparacino." After all, Sparacino is knuckling under to the public position taken by the committee and letting them speak for him because he carries their brand. It might help Sparacino win. Trump is popular with enough people. I decided I would save that blog post for a week or two to see if Sparacino steps up and speaks out. I doubt he will. He may think it "smart" not to engage. The problem with that is that this means he is vulnerable to being closely tied to Trump in the public mind, which is not how he is branding himself. I suspect he does not want to be perceived as Trump's buddy and puppet--not in the general election at least. The price he pays for hiding out is that other people get to brand Sparacino in the absence of his being forthright. Maybe others will draw a picture Sparacino is comfortable with. Maybe not. If Sparacino is not an election-denying Trump clone, maybe he should say so.
The Jackson County Republicans are parroting the stupid lies spewed by Trump and his supporters about the election being stolen. If they don't represent the majority of Republicans, why do the vast majority of Republicans believe their stupid lies? And why do the few who know how crazy stupid the lies are remain a part of it? The Trump GOP will live in infamy as Putin’s most successful sabotage against the United States.
“When they lie low, we get high!” —Barry O, Choom Gang.
Leadership isn't telling people what they want to hear.
Leadership is telling people what they need to hear.
How can I donate to make sure this coward doesn't get near Salem?
And as far as trusting anyone with an R after their name, that ship has sailed. I will never again vote for a republican (which I once was)
Post a Comment