Oregon, My Oregon

From Dan Greenfield at Front Page, Oregon Dems Ban Republicans From Running for Office, " the kind of “attack on democracy” that Democrats love."

After years of trying to “protect democracy” and “fortify democracy”, Democrats finally succeeded in Oregon where they banned Republicans from running for office. That’s what the Democrat flavor of democracy looks like.

When the Tennessee House of Representatives temporarily expelled two Democrats who had taken part in an insurrection on its grounds, the media quickly turned it into a national story. The move by the Republican majority was an “attack on democracy”.

But when the Democrat majority in Oregon banned half the Republican Senate delegation from running for reelection, that has been treated as a local story. And not an “attack on democracy”.

While much of Oregon is actually conservative, some urban and suburban populations tilt the state sharply leftward. Oregon’s conservatives, who have been otherwise shut out of the legislative process, have taken to protesting extreme bills by staging walkouts.

Using walkouts to break legislative quorums is not an unusual tactic. Democrats have done it in Texas, Indiana and Wisconsin. But when Democrats practice it, as they do in Texas, it’s cheered by the media. In 2021, for example, Texas Democrats staged a 38 day walkout to block election reform. Democrats welcomed them to D.C. and the media portrayed them as heroes.

“These folks are going to be remembered on the right side of history,” Senator Chuck Schumer had pontificated. “The governor and the Republican legislators will be remembered on the dark and wrong side of history.”

What’s the “right side of history” in Oregon where the Democrat majority is trying to ban Oregon State Senate Republicans from running for reelection because they broke Democrat quorums?

One of the reasons Republicans walked out was to stop a Democrat proposal to allow 14-year-old girls to get abortions without notifying their parents.

Oregon Senate Republicans had walked out for 43 days, as opposed to the Texas Democrat 38 day walkout. But when Democrats are in the minority, as in Texas or Tennessee, walkouts are heroic and democratic, but once they take the majority then they suppress democracy.

Oregon Dems, Bloomberg’s Everytown anti-gun group, Planned Parenthood, along with unions misrepresenting teachers, nurses and government employees, spent $2.53 million pushing Measure 113 that would penalize Republicans for “unexcused absences”. Since the Democrat permanent majority’s leadership is responsible for deciding what is an “excused” or “unexcused” absence, Measure 113 was a partisan proposition financed by leftist billionaires and aimed at suppressing the political opposition of the rest of the state.

Sounds like an ex post facto law to me, expressly forbidden by the US Constitution.  "An ex post facto law is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law. . . . Congress is prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 3 of Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution. The states are prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 1 of Article I, Section 10. This is one of the relatively few restrictions that the United States Constitution made to both the power of the federal and state governments before the Fourteenth Amendment.

Maybe we should pass a law that says legislators who vote for blatantly unconstitutional laws should be forbidden to be re-elected.