Oregon, a hate State

Commenter and blogger Ten Bears at Homeless on the High Desert had a post-up a couple of days ago depicting issues in Oregon with regard to a high risk for violence. Crooks and Liars picked up Ten Bears post a few days ago the same as Angry Bear is doing today.

As Ten Bears comments, it looks like the far right is exercising greater influence over the direction the Republican Party is taking in Oregon. Similar is occurring in Michigan with the failure to convict the people planning to kidnap Governor Whitmer.

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While Oregon officials grapple with an auditor’s finding that the state is at high risk for extremist violence, it’s becoming eminently clear that one of the wellsprings of the problem is the state’s own Republican Party. Even more than the GOP on the national level, Oregon’s Republicans have descended into an open embrace of the very factions that inspire and inflict that violence.

QAnon, Proud Boys candidates embraced by Oregon Republican Party

David Neiwert, Daily Chaos ~ A portrait of Oregon Republicans in 2022: Three GOP candidates are given an onstage benediction by a QAnon preacher praying over them. At a local “Lincoln Day” dinner, a group of Proud Boys—including a man under indictment for felony assault—share drinks and applause for their cohort running for a state House seat. At a debate among U.S. Senate candidates, the QAnon-loving 2020 Senate nominee compares aid to Ukraine with Donald Trump’s border wall, while she and her cohorts all condemn the nonexistent teaching of “critical race theory” for “breeding racism” in Oregon schools. …

Mainstream Republicans have been wrestling with the far-right takeover of the party apparatus for over a year now, following the vote by the party faithful in February 2021 to unseat Chairman Bill Currier, a vocal Trump supporter, and replace him with state Sen. Dallas Heard, a Republican from Myrtle Creek notorious for aligning with far-right causes. Heard led a pro-Trump protest at the Oregon Capitol in Salem on Jan. 6, 2021, at the same time as the U.S. Capitol insurrection—and had previously led a rally on Dec. 21, 2020 in which Patriots attacked and successfully breached the Oregon Capitol.

Heard stepped down as party chair in early March, accusing his fellow Republicans of “communist psychological warfare tactics” intended to “destroy anyone of true character.” His letter explained that he can no longer “survive exposure to the toxicity that can be found in this community.”

“The endless slander, gossip, conspiracies, sabotage, lies, hatred, pointless criticism, blocking of ideas, and mutiny brought against my administration has done what I once never thought possible,” Heard wrote. “They have broken my spirit. I can face the Democrats with courage and conviction, but I can’t fight my own people too.”

The bizarro world takeover has begun driving out ordinary mainstream Republicans, including the party’s 2018 gubernatorial nominee, Kent Buehler. His final straw came in February 2021 after party officials  passed a resolution claiming that the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection was a “false flag” intended to smear Trump.

“I don’t know what the Republican Party stands for”

Ten Bears: Bend is not the town, Oregon not the state I grew up, spent over sixty years in