Right Shift. The Republican Party in Oregon and Delaware.

The Oregon Republican Party made the national news. They looked like kooks.

The Oregon GOP said the Trump rally and subsequent Capitol insurrection was actually the Democrats' doing.  Really. 

Mark Hatfield

The Republican Party of Oregon passed a resolution. It shocked the national media because Oregon Republicans had a reputation for sanity and moral courage: Mark Hatfield; Bob Packwood; Tom McCall. They stood for a kind of practical, business-oriented common-sense Republican. They didn't seem to be haters or especially partisan. They reflected Main Street and the Chamber of Commerce. 

They weren't pitchfork ideologues. 

The resolution was voted on by a 22-person Executive Committee. The Party Chair, Bill Currier, represents the "establishment" business-oriented wing of the GOP. He has been fighting intra-party contests for years against overtly Trump-oriented populist rivals. The resolution shows how dramatically party consensus shifted to the populist, smash-mouth, fire-breathing right. Remember, Currier is criticized for being too moderate.

What does the resolution say?

1.  Republican traitors. It called GOP Representatives who voted to impeach Trump traitors, and likened them to Benedict Arnold. They said their criticism of Trump's behavior on January 6 was a "surrender to leftist forces seeking to establish a dictatorship void of all cherished freedoms and liberties."

2. False flag. They wrote: "Whereas there is growing evidence that the violence at the Capitol was a “false flag” operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans; this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democrat goal of seizing total power, in a frightening parallel to the February 1933 burning of the German Reichstag."

3. False flag will unleash tyranny. They wrote to expect detention without trial, secret witnesses, end of due process, the re-establishment of the Sedition Act of 1798, and worse.

The Oregon Republican Party is hurting the Republican brand.

Republican members of the Oregon House understood this was a bridge too far. The Party position statement labels officeholders who run for re-election a kooks, as fringe conspiracy-nuts, and people who need to face the voters rushed to disassociate themselves from the statement. All eighteen state House Republicans signed a statement repudiating the statement. They said there is no evidence the Capitol insurrection was a false flag. The Party position was un-tenable. Too many passionate Trump supporters were there, proudly, waving Trump flags then coming home to fellow Republicans saying on camera they they were there for Trump and because of him. 

Republican politicians are in a squeeze between their primary election voters and the general electorate. The Republican Party in Oregon represents voters who show up for primary elections, and they are in a bubble of belief and affirmation in the suite of Trump assertions regarding election fraud, Biden as socialist, the need to overturn the election by force, and some or all of the Q-anon conspiracies. The wider electorate thinks those ideas are nuts.

Up close in Delaware. I don't follow Delaware politics but college classmate Jonathan Walters does. He shares a matter-of-fact report on the state of politics in his Philadelphia-area home, at the confluence of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. He is an attorney with a practice representing labor unions and who by virtue of his practice, has to be attuned to what is happening in the political world.

Guest Post by Jonathan Walters

Jonathan Walters

Delaware (a state close to where I live and where I often find myself practicing law in representing labor unions), in addition to being the adoptive home of our 46 th President, is one of the smallest states in theUnion, but with a disproportionate influence on the national economy, given that it is the legal state of incorporation for many of the largest corporations in the U. S. For decades, it elected both Democrats and Republicans to Federal and state positions. William Roth held a U. S. Senate seat from 1971 through 2001, having been the one Delaware congressman for four years previously and Mike Castle was Governor of Delaware from 1985 through 1992 and then became the Delaware Congressman from 1995 through 2011. By and large, the Republicans were center-right.

Since 2008, the Democrats have controlled all branches of Delaware state government as the Republicans have moved further and further to the right. At this point, there are no state wide offices held by Republicans (for 30 years, one Republican was state auditor and for a two year period between 2016 and 2018, there was a Republican state treasurer), and the Democrats control both houses of the legislature, as they have since 2008.

Perhaps 2010 was the year that explains what has happened in Delaware and why the Republicans have no presence ---in 2010, Mike Castle decided to run for the U. S. Senate, the seat being held, after Joe Biden was elected Vice President, by Ted Kauffman who decided not run to fill the rest of Biden’s term. He was considered the heavy favorite over the likely Democratic candidate Chris Coon, who was New Castle County Executive. However, in 2010, the Tea Party movement developed a major presence in the U.S. within the GOP and Christine O’Donnell, a right wing Republican most noted for having dabbled in witchcraft (I am not making this up) and creatively embellishing her educational record, beat Castle in the Republican primary. She was then swamped by Coons in the 2010 general election.

Since 2010, the GOP in Delaware has moved far to the right. The important point to be made is that it has been marginalized in terms of its ability to play a role in political debate with the state. While it still has a presence in the less populated Kent and Sussex Counties, it is very weak in New Castle County (where Wilmington is located) where over 60% of Delawareans reside. The effect of this – as one of my union clients who has a leadership position with the State AFL-CIO and the Building Trades explained to me, there are a number of legislative moves on, including an increase in the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Such goals would have been far harder to achieve before 2008.

A similar development has occurred in three of the suburban Philadelphia counties – Delaware (where I lived for many years), Chester (considered horse country) and Montgomery (the financial core of the Pennsylvania Republican Party) - which were, when I first moved to the Philadelphia in 1976, rock-ribbed Republican. County governments were completely controlled by the GOP and the voting Federal offices – President, Senate, and House – followed that pattern. Over the past ten to 15 years, these counties have completely shifted and more moderate Republicans – such as Ryan Costello (and Charles Dent in the Lehigh Valley just north of  Philadelphia – concluded they could not run and win.

My final point is that the Republicans that used to get elected in both Delaware and the suburbs of Philadelphia, were not crazy – they could make temporary alliances on issues with different groups, including labor, which still has a presence in the area, when the need arose. But that is simply not the case anymore as the GOP has moved further to the right. In fact, this is reflected in some very ad hoc observations I made in October while driving around Delaware County, where I used to live and which was at one time controlled by a GOP political machine. There were numerous areas where I would see yard signs (Pennsylvania seems very big on this method of communication) for various Republican local candidates but not for Trump. On the other hand, there were Biden signs galore. 

Where that leaves the Republican parties in Delaware and the Philly suburbs is anyone’s guess but as an article in today’s NewYork Times indicates, the state GOP seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid.