Speaking of RINO’s, the RINO (Ron Saxton) who defeated Kevin Mannix in the 2006 Governor’s primary has endorsed Mannix’s bid to win election to Congress.
A lot of the posters on here don’t seem to have a good grasp of Oregon politics.
The state’s libs/dems are concentrated in the population centers, but the majority of counties is by far Republican. The problem arose when because of bad leadership in the party (i.e., people who just wanted the press to like them) Dems were just running as blue-dog Dems and beating the squishy republicans (taking advantage of the general national climate as well). So all those outlying counties/districts suddenly weren’t GOP strongholds anymore.
Now that the Dems are in charge, they are trying to shred the initiative system, they have voted not to allow minority reports to come to the floor (thanks to a squishy GOP person voted with dems on rules changes) and they are just writing bills among themselves behind closed doors with no minority input whatsoever. Now that they’re in charge, they’re also trying to do as much damage as possible by creating fake “emergency” sessions in order to get around the oregon constitution which says that the legislature can only meet every other year.
The solution is NOT to moderate the GOP, it’s to stick to conservative principles and win back all those counties where Republicans are the majority. The party leaders are wussies, who will do anything to get some good press. It’s really sad.
The Dorchester Conference is basically known as the squishy republican gathering.