Lie
The Oregon State Republican Party and its Big Lie
The Oregon State Republican Party embraced a lie, a big lie. That Big Lie is that Trump really won the White House in 2020 but, due to voter fraud, the Democrats dishonestly captured the White House. Even after sixty of their Republican lawsuits were thrown out of the courts for lack of voter fraud evidence and even after more honest, honorable Republican Election officials testified to the integrity of the 2020 election, confirming the Democrats won the Presidency, the Oregon Republican Party promotes the Big Lie. But, then, on top of that lie, these Republicans take it a step further by promoting an even bigger unacceptable lie that equates the Democrats’ control of the government by the democratic process to Hitler’s takeover of Hindenburg’s government in the 1930’s with a reference to the “February 1933 burning of the German Reichstag” in a despicable resolution censuring the ten Republican Congressional Members that voted to impeach Trump.
We saw the Capital Riots in real time with our own eyes one month ago today, caught on live TV and by the rioters themselves with posts to their social media accounts. We know who is responsible for those riots. We know who is responsible for attacking and vandalizing our Capital Building. There is no doubt it was Trump supporters and there is no doubt they were incited by incendiary statements made by Trump and his dishonest band of corrupt lieutenants on that tragic day and for months earlier before the riot with their dishonest and unfounded claims of voter fraud.
It is a sick, twisted, dishonest, unethical, morally corrupt and demented argument that the Oregon Republican Party makes to say that the blame for the insurrection belongs to someone or something else and that the Republicans who had enough honor and dignity to respect our laws to impeach Trump are somehow traitors. Who is the traitor: someone who picks country over Party or someone who picks Party over country? To the contrary, in the view of the majority of Americans, these courageous Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are valiant heroes. They chose to defend our system of government. They chose to defend self-rule and our Constitution over the corrupt aims of a dishonest tyrant spreading a Big Lie about the election he lost and then inciting a riot after he failed to get his way with his many attempts to corrupt the election results.
And with these statements of false equivalency, these not so respectable Republicans in the Oregon Republican Party signing this resolution of censure against their more honorable colleagues are, interestingly, the ones who are committing the fraud they claim others are committing. The Oregon Republican Party fails to acknowledge reality. The Oregon Republican Party fails to recognize that the real traitors are the ones supporting a corrupt lying tyrant over the Constitution of the United States of America.
The Oregon Republican Party has pledged its loyalty to an inciting tyrant. The Oregon Republican Party has expressly rejected the ideals of our Founding Fathers that are prohibitively against destructive autocrats who divide the nation to steer a course towards “permanent despotism.” The very thing President Washington warned against in his Farewell Address about the corrosive path that can result from partisan affiliation that threatens our democracy is the very insidious thing the Oregon Republican Party is embracing with open arms. Their Party is more important than our country.
Ironically, it is the leaders of the Oregon Republican Party who are the ones most mimicking the actions of Hitler by embracing the Big Lie in the same way Hitler embraced his twisted Big Lie that the Jews were responsible for a conspiracy that made everyone think Germany lost World War I when, in the Nazi’s delusional minds, Germany actually had won it. Sound familiar? To add more confusion, the Nazis themselves referred to the proposition that the Germans lost World War I as the “Big Lie.” This act of paying homage to Hitler and his Nazi’s reprehensible propaganda tactics by the Oregon Republican Party comes complete with the dishonest conspiracy theories that are at the base of their warped belief system. Truth does not matter to the Oregon Republican Party just like it does not matter to most nefarious Political Parties positioned against democracy that you can name in the historical record.
There is only one way this story ends if it is not properly addressed. We’ve seen it before. It’s written in history and it is easily accessible for your evaluation. And to be clear, it’s not a good ending.
The Oregon Republican Party’s delusion will either serve to destroy their Party or serve to destroy our country. One scenario is less tragic than the other but both are very tragic. Either way, it does seem the Oregon Republican Party is bent on destroying our country in ways that are not too dissimilar from the ways that the Nazis destroyed their own country by using matching dishonest methods of creating doubt and division among its citizenry. These methods are not only offensive but they are truly un-American. It is why the Oregon State Republican Party, itself, needs to be censured.
Today is President Reagan’s birthday. President Reagan would be greatly saddened by how far his beloved Party has travelled away from that shining “City on a Hill” that he often spoke about. That city of truth, union and diversity that once welcomed all has now been replaced with a gloomy, dark, decrepit city full of lies and corruption where power for the sake of power is idolized and only Republicans who devote their entire being to Trump are welcomed.
When considering how much our system of government is based upon compromise and respect for the individual, this extreme polarization has no place in American politics but this is especially true when one side of that polarized fray is based upon a dangerously unacceptable lie that the losers won an election that they clearly lost. Such unfounded and outrageous notions are a clear threat to the very existence of our 244 year old experiment in self-rule. Such notions need to be rejected outright and, those perpetuating them, need to be condemned.
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/politics/oregon-republican-party-censure-donald-trump/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_liehttps://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957141129/can-the-forces-unleashed-by-trumps-big-election-lie-be-undone