Category: Newsroom

Stephen Moore, perhaps the most senior economic advisor to Donald Trump, and an old friend, stayed with Diana and me at our house in Bend this weekend. Saturday evening he spoke to a private gathering of our friends and we raised a good chunk of money for Rich Burke’s Western Liberty Network. (BTW, Steve is confident we’re going to have a 40-state Trump landslide.) We did some hiking at Shevlin Park and worked out at the Bend Athletic Club. #1 guy. Fun weekend!

Editorial by David Jaques, Roseburg Beacon

Impeach Justice Kavanaugh, Impeach President Trump…when does it end?

The Democrats in Congress have absolutely no concept of leading this nation. Pelosi has not even pretended to announce a legislative agenda since she was handed the Speaker’s gavel, again, some 22 months ago. About all she can do is try to manage the outright communists in ‘The Squad’ and try to do damage control from the agenda that they and the Democrat candidates for president roll out each time there is a debate.

Make no mistake, in spite of her stammering and evasive presentation style, Pelosi is no dummy, and is very much a political animal; one whose natural instinct is to survive, and she can read the handwriting on the wall, and the ‘real polling’ data that she has access to. And the bottom line is that she knows her days as speaker are numbered if she can’t uncouple from the New Green Deal and the Medicare-for-all fake entitlement programs being pushed by the aforementioned socialists, who have now hijacked the Democrat Party.

Let’s look back to the Democrats’ first calls to Impeach Trump. Representative Maxine Waters has been literally screaming this mantra since before the President’s Inaugural speech. They have tried everything they could think of to find something that rises to the level of an impeachable offense. First it was making his personal tax returns available, then Russian collusion, followed by nearly two and a half years of the Mueller “investigation,” and simultaneously it was his nomination of Bret Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice, with intermittent sprinkles of phony sex scandals and payoffs, then racism, and on it goes…with no end in sight.

The most recent hack on the President was that his economic policies are a failure, and that we are in, or heading into, a great recession. Only problem with that one is that the Fed and the markets don’t see it that way. So what do the Dems have left but to go back to their original tactic to Impeach.

So here they are shifting gears once again, only this time it’s down shifting, gears grinding all the way.

And the Impeachment scheme is the biggest grind of them all. As Congressman Doug Collins from Georgia put it in the Lewandowski hearing “Here’s the problem: Seventeen members of the Judiciary Committee have said that they think the president ought to be impeached,” he said. “So, why are we still investigating it? The problem is, you don’t have the votes. You don’t have the numbers. Even if you got it out of this committee, you don’t have it on the floor. That’s your problem.”

So the Democrats are 0 for 5 (or 0 for 50) on presidential scandals. Nothing has stuck. But that of course does not stop the mainstream media from raising doubts about the president’s approval rating. Yet President Trump keeps turning out thousands in his rallies across the nation. And the economy is setting all-time records. And at the end of it all people will vote their pocketbooks.

The Democrats in Congress have offered no solutions, no agenda to help average working men and women, and no vision for the future. Their singular message has been hate Trump, and divide Americans. The American people want something more, and Trump has been delivering. His America First agenda, combined with the greatest economic expansion perhaps in our lifetime is speaking volumes, and even though it has had to rise above all the clamoring of the nay-sayers, it is still resonating with Americans from all walks of life!

Editor’s note: One of the things that really serves as motivation to keep us going is the positive feedback each week from a variety of sources about the content and reach of The Roseburg Beacon, now in our 11th year of publication. This week it came from Marylin Shannon who reported this: “I was at the Eagle Council in St. Louis this past weekend. A 96 year old woman from South Dakota sat next to me at lunch one day. She asked me, “Do you read the Roseburg Beacon? It is so good!” I told her yes I do. The editor is one of my closest friends. She thought I was the luckiest person ever. She lives in South Dakota, and has a great story. She is from Austria and she hates Socialism and Communism for all the right reasons.”

Time sensitive. Rare opportunity.

Would you like to meet President Trump’s senior economic advisor, one-on-one?

Stephen Moore, one if the chief architects of President Trump’s economic plan, is coming to Bend this weekend to spend a couple of days with Diana and me. He’s an old friend. While he’s here, we’re hosting an intimate fund-raising get-together at a private, secured location in Bend. It will be this Saturday, September 21st from 5:00pm to 8:00pm. Steve will make a presentation to the group and you can ask him anything you want, one-on-one, over the course of the evening.

Steve is the founder of the Club for Growth, a Heritage Foundation Distinguished Visiting Fellow, contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other national publications, and co-author of “Trumponomics: Inside the America First Plan to Revive Our Economy,” with Arthur Laffer, his close confidant. Recently Steve was nominated by President Trump to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. You’ve seen him on Fox News.

It will be a limited, intimate group of no more than thirty. We’ve had a couple of last-minute cancellations so there are now a couple of seats open.

Our organization, Make Oregon Great Again2020 will sponsor, but it’s a fundraiser for Western Liberty Network (https://wlnexecdir.wixsite.com/wstlbtnet.) Tax deductible $500 minimum contribution per attendee. Informal. Catered. Secure.

It’s first-come/first-serve so if you want to attend please respond ASAP in Facebook Messenger, or email me at samc@makeoregongreatagain.com.

-Sam and Diana Carpenter

September 5, 2019

Oregon voters: where they stand today. Brand new Triton Polling comprehensive scientific poll: Donald Trump’s Oregon popularity, the top two issues in Oregon, voter opinions on sanctuary state and much more. Would love to get your comments!

Here’s the latest scientific poll of Oregon voters.

Conducted by Triton Polling in late July, Diana and I personally commissioned it at a cost of $4,150.

Initially we were not going to release it, but have now decided to make it public. Here is our summary and links to the actual results. In some instances, you will see that we have added our personal subjective conclusions.

• The robocall Triton Poll questions reached “likely voters.” The four largest political voter segments representing 95.1% of Oregon voters were carefully segmented by geography, gender, age, etc. We worked hard to get it right using Triton’s most up-to-date databases and applying an exacting scientific methodology. This is a hyper-balanced, profoundly fair analysis of the Oregon voter population as a whole, including Republicans, Democrats, Independents and the non-affiliated. Samples were relatively large with the margin-of-error rate at an unusually low 2.4%.
• Matching the Oregon voting population, here is the percentage breakdown of our samples of likely voters by political category:
• There has been burgeoning growth in the number of Democrat “progressive” voters. Subjective: In early 2016, my estimate that 30% of Oregon Democrats were outright progressive was probably a bit too conservative, maybe by 10%. And also, since Donald Trump became president, Democrat party leadership has turned hard Left. With these two factors combined, we’d say that today the percentage of Democrats who call themselves progressive is 50%. This equates to approximately 20% of our total voting population. Our viewpoint is that these are seriously unreasonable people and so we Republicans should stop wasting time trying to convince them of anything. Strategy? Let’s focus on the other 80%…
• Overall, significantly telling statistics are some of the very low “Not Sure/Don’t Know” responses. At this point, most voters seem to have already made up their minds. (There are a few exceptions and these are only on the Democrat side: they are soft and indecisive about Law enforcement Q7, veterans Q8, rural Oregon Q9, and whether the size of oregon government is reasonable Q11.) Subjective bottom line: This position-passion is also supported by the fact that poll respondents were highly motivated to answer the rather lengthy questioning as illustrated by the two-day completion of the survey. Isaiah Flair, our Triton Polling contact, had estimated, based on many other previous polls that Triton has conducted, that it would take 4 days to complete the survey. He confirmed with me that the hyper-contracted time-frame of less than 2 days suggests that voters are very anxious to express their views. Oregon is truly polarized. (However, our analysis of Question #2, below, suggests this current decisiveness will soften as the election comes closer).
• Outside of this poll, but important and germane enough to note here: Based on the Oregon Republican Party executive elections held last February, and the ORP’s history of activity over 2017 and 2018, few would disagree that 90% of the ORP Executive Committee and 70% of the ORP Central Committee has bought into the argument that the party must move left if we are to win elections. Subjective: this is an interesting positioning considering the move-Left tact has never worked. (Postscript: Bill Currier, ORP Chair was offended by the previous remarks and shortly after I released this post he issued a defensive statement to his Central Committee, calling me “anti-Republican,” and, “anti-party.” Good grief. My beef is not with the “Republican Party,” it’s with the leadership of the Executive Committee of the Oregon Republican Party. If you, the reader, are wondering whether or not  the ORP Executive Committee truly represents you and the other 701,000 registered Republicans in Oregon, read this. And, since Chair Currier has opened this particular can of worms, maybe he will finally answer the questions in this post for his Executive and Central Committees.)
• Note there are two Triton Polling statistical reports:

1. “Top Line,” the combined results of all three political segments.
   Triton – July 2019 Topline Results
2. “Crosstabs,” with statistics provided for any one of the particular questions: at the bottom of this spreadsheet are tabs Q1 through Q12. (Q12 is actually labeled “Party.”) Click on any of those tabs to get results based on that particular parameter.
   Triton – July 2019 Crosstabs

Following are summaries of the poll questions to the combined four Oregon primary political segments (Republicans, Democrats, Independents and non-affiliated). See Spreadsheets.

Q2. President Trump. “If the election were held today, would you vote for him?” Overall, for all voters combined, the numbers say that if the election were held today he would be defeated in Oregon by a margin of 12.5%. In comparison to our polling results of early 2018, Oregon Republican support of the President has slackened by 11%, from 89% to 78%. This lower level of popularity is consistent with his drop in national polls. In Oregon, why has this happened? Subjective: An ugly mainstream media, an impotent and historically RINO Oregon Republican Party, and Donald Trump’s lack of personal exposure in the state. Can this be turned around? Question #2’s “Not Sure/Don’t Know” combined statistics is a low 4.9%. In the surface analysis, this low number suggest that most voters have already made up their minds about Donald Trump. However, as election day approaches there will be an increase in emotional intensity and there will be cross-overs: Republican to Democrat? Near zero. Democrat to Republican? Substantial. The other factor to consider is that some voters are reluctant to admit to a pollster that they support Donald Trump. Diana and I are confident that President Trump’s Republican popularity will again be at 90% or higher as the general  election occurs 14 months from now.

Q3. Overall, Top-Line results show immigration/sanctuary state and the economy are the two lead issues, total 44%. Cross-tab analysis shows Republicans at 74% and Independents at 47%. At 19%, Democrats don’t see these two issues as important, putting their focus on the environment (aka climate change), and healthcare (aka single-payer health insurance), at a combined 50%. Our subjective thoughts: Not surprising….

Q4. Overall, Top-Line results show 51% support the border wall, 47% oppose it. Cross-tab analysis shows Republicans overwhelmingly favor it (91%). Independents support it by a majority (58%). Only 17% of Democrats support the wall, with 80% opposed. This major disparity between parties rivals the question of Donald Trump himself. Subjective: we are surprised at Democrat passion for open borders.

Q5. Support or oppose Sanctuary State? Overall, 49% support it. Cross-tab analysis shows Republicans strongly oppose (84%). NAV/Ind. modestly (55%) oppose. Democrats decidedly want to continue sanctuary state status (16% opposed; 80% in favor). The strength of Democrat support of our sanctuary state status is strong. Again, a huge disparity between Republicans and Democrats.

Q6. Pro-life and pro-choice. We deliberately kept the answer possibilities simple (“yes, from-conception,” “no, pro-choice,” and, “not sure”). Top Line results give a 19 point advantage to pro-choice. Cross-tab analysis: Republicans are 65% pro-life-from-conception, but have a significant segment that is pro-choice: 20%. As expected, Democrats are overwhelmingly pro-choice (82% vs 11% pro-life). Independents modestly side with Democrats but are not nearly as adamant (48% choice and 39% Life).

Q7. Are police hindered by politicians? Top Line: by a 25% margin, most agree. Cross-tab analysis shows that Republicans strongly agree (80%), and NAV/Ind. Modestly agree (57%). Democrats are soft: 26% agree, 40% disagree, with 34% unsure. Subjective: the softness/indecisiveness of Democrats on this issue is interesting as their own blue metro areas, where most of them live, are without question falling into dangerous chaos.

Q8. “Have Oregon veterans been treated fairly?” Most disagree, by a 17% margin. Cross-tab: Republicans and NAV/Ind. are the strongest, both disagree at 52%. Democrats disagree at 46% with 23% unsure.

Q9. Politicians have “done enough” for Rural Oregon. All three political segments disagree with this by an enormous combined 42% margin. Even so, the cross-tab analysis shows Democrats are soft here, compared to Republicans and NAV/Ind.. Republicans 84% disagree, Independents 70% disagree. Democrats 44% disagree with 22% not sure. These are not surprising results considering Oregon’s geographic city/country political division. Subjective: there is also the factor of the palpable disdain Democrat progressive city-dwellers tend to have for rural Republicans.

Q10. Wildfires: “State leaders have done enough to prevent massive wildfires…” Overall, all segments agree there is a problem here, with a huge  40% margin between those who disagree and those who agree. Republicans disagree at 74%. NAV/Ind. 71%. Democrats 54%. Not surprising results.

Q11. “Do you approve or disapprove of the size and influence of the Salem Government?” Overall, disapprove outweighs approve by a 16% margin. Cross-tab: Republicans and NAV/Ind. disapprove strongly at 79% and 62% respectively (with approve at 12% and 26%). Dem’s disapprove at 23%, approve at 56%, The Democrat not-sure answer is indecisively high at 21%. This illustrates another huge disparity between Oregon Republicans and Democrats.

“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States…with all of those benefits. It’s ridiculous, and it has to end.”

-Donald Trump

Adapted from Facebook Post of August 21, 2019

(11/18/2019 update:  Note that my suggestion at the end of this piece which was written late last summer, was to simply ignore the ORP until the next elections in February, 2021. However,  it appears there will be a second ORP-sponsored recall-Kate-Brown-petition attempt in January. This will be right on the heels of the first one’s miserable failure. So here at MOGA2020 we must jump into the fray again to continue to expose the lunacy of top ORP leadership. Although the ORP has almost zero contact with Republican base of over 704,000 voters, it certainly has the capacity to gum up the works as it poses as our official representative. Let’s see if we can stop another recall attempt. )

Yes, this is a relatively long post, but this “alternative viewpoint” must be spelled out in detail.

Let’s start here: You’ve seen the singer in a bar or at the county fair, performing his or her heart out to an audience of zero. Dozens of empty seats, or a few tables filled with the inebriated; talking too loud and ignoring the performer.

Painful for the singer. Painful to watch.

In pressing hard for new leadership in the ORP Executive elections earlier this year, Diana and I and our slate made the mistake of campaigning to an ORP Executive Committee audience that has zero mechanical connection to 99.9% of our registered-to-vote Oregon Republicans. To say it in opposite terms, we campaigned to an ORP top state leadership that has the enthusiastic support of less than one-tenth of one percent of Oregon Republicans – maybe 500 total.

Despite this, the ORP Executive Committee represents itself to the world as the voice of all 701,000 Oregon Republican voters.

That’s right. The “supporting reach” of our ORP top leadership is limited to no more than 500 Oregon Republicans, many of whom lie within the official party structure itself.

Personally, I believe this total is more like 200.

But it must be said that most members of the Central Committee are solid conservative souls, some of whom have been hoodwinked – or railroaded – by a couple or three clever Executive Committee leaders who have been (and I will be kind here) “influenced” by the progressive Left.

Do not confuse what I am saying here. There is a difference between being a loyal Republican, and being a blind-faith supporter of the current left-leaning ORP Executive Committee leadership regime. These are two very different entities negotiating two very different trajectories.

The Central Committee members who haven’t been hoodwinked or railroaded? This large segment quietly seethes at what’s happened to their Republican Party Executive leadership…and of course there are those few within the official ORP administrative structure – certainly less than 100 total – who truly believe that Executive Committee is on-target and boldly leading us out of the grip of the current blue Trifecta/legislative super-majority stranglehold.

So here it is, in summary: In the Platform meeting in Pendleton this week there will be maybe 120 Central Committee attendees of whom probably half are skeptical of current leadership. This means that the entire Republican Party voter block across the state – 701,000 strong – is being represented by an “establishment/moderate” official leadership of less than 100.

This is the definition of hijacking

Last Monday, a lone ORP Executive Committee supporter emailed me to say that I should stop blogging about any of this because I “am dividing the party.”

Good God.

Fact is, I’m calling out only the tiny Executive Committee and their Central Committee supporters – no more than 100 members total – who claim to represent all 701,000 Republican voters within the state.

I’m not dividing the Oregon Republican Party. The ORP Executive Committee has already done that.

But let’s move on, keeping this in mind: although unconnected to 99.9% of Oregon Republicans, the ORP administrative organization itself has been very important to the leftist media and the Democrat opposition who have used the Oregon Republican Party leadership’s irrelevance to proclaim that ALL 701,000+ Oregon Republicans are irrelevant…labeling us as reactionary, backwards, uneducated; extremist gun-clingers and bible-thumpers…and a dying breed.

And it gets worse. You and I – the grassroots/country class – have been blamed for our party’s dire condition by the same few “moderate” top Republican leaders who have, over the years, have nearly destroyed it. The smokescreen they hide behind is in accusing you and me of dragging the party to the Right when the reality is that they have been relentlessly pounding it hard to the Left.

And as our Executive Committee party leadership quietly approves, Knute Buehler repeatedly prattles on that he is “moderate” and “thoughtful,” and (I hate this) a “new kind of Republican.” What he’s saying is that he thinks you and I — essentially the 90% of Oregon Republicans who support our President — are extreme, thoughtless, stuck in the past…and maybe not so smart.

It’s no surprise that those incessant indictments never raise the hackles of our ORP top Executive Committee leadership.

The county Republican parties? Most are barely supported by the state organization yet in their isolation most members have valiantly forged ahead anyway, proud in their conservatism and their support of our President.

(And speaking of President Trump, in my previous post I pointed out how the Executive Committee offered near-zero support of Donald Trump from his inauguration in July 2016 until this past January 2019, when they were forced into supporting him. Since January, the ORP website front page has been cartoonishly pro-Trump, never mind that many of the website’s important back-pages have been “under construction” for the last four years.)

In any case, it’s within the county organizations that any Oregon GOP power lies.

So, how many will “get” what I am saying here? Maybe only ten percent of the Executive Committee, but certainly fifty percent of the Central Committee. The 701,000 base? I’d say ninety percent agree: these  hundreds of thousands of Oregonians have been powerless and have had nowhere to go.

Our Republican Party has been hijacked – and then neutered – by just a handful of Republicans who don’t think like we think.

The relatively miniscule ORP Executive Committee leadership contingent will continue within their dream world, assuring themselves of their importance. But looking at the numbers – and there is no disputing this – they simply don’t matter to literally 99.9% of Republicans state-wide.

Following is tangible, mechanical proof. As an inarguable indicator, look at Facebook which is THE major social media platform, and a reliable gauge of an organization’s reach and engagement. Nowadays, for anyone with a Page, Facebook statistics precisely answer the question, “How many people are actually hearing what is being said?”

We’ll look at the three primary Oregon conservative post-controlled Pages.

What follows is statistical and therefore precisely objective. Don’t argue with me. You can see the numbers for yourself by going to the following Facebook pages:

1. The Oregon Republican Party
2. Knute Buehler official Page
3. Making Reality Great Again (Our private political Page)

Let’s average the statistics of the five most recent posts on each Page (per the analysis I did going backwards from August 13th).

Oregon Republican Party (15K followers*):	Likes 112	Shares 10	Comments 9
Knute Buehler political page (15K followers*):	Likes 130	Shares 4	Comments 26
Making Reality Great Again (91K followers):	Likes 6,930	Shares 2,081	Comments 773

No, this isn’t a trick. Yes, the dichotomy is stunning. The numbers speak for themselves. If you are skeptical, go back to those three Pages yourself and average out the stats using your own selected date range. Compare the numbers.

And be sure to read the footnote below. To us, it looks like there’s been serious damage done to the current and future influence of the ORP Facebook Page (and the Buehler Page, for that matter).

Here’s another statistic: an individual ORP or Buehler post is reaching an average of maybe 1,000 while the reach of an average Making Reality Great Again post regularly exceeds 75,000.

So my mistake has been to take six months to write a book about an ORP revitalization that we aimed solely at the ORP leadership’s extremely limited constituency. And then, after that, to repeatedly blog and speak to this same paltry faction.

We have been talking to an almost empty room. I was THAT bar room singer!

What can we do now?

First, let’s leave the ORP Executive Committee carcass for the moderate vultures who currently control it. Let it go. No point in fighting this contingent. Numerically, and therefore influentially, they simply don’t matter. Even though there are a few truly conservative CD-affiliated members on the Executive Committee, there is no chance to change the trajectory of this leadership any time soon. Leave them to wallow and bloviate within their own little swamp.

The Executive Committee can continue to endlessly revise the bylaws to their immediate advantage, eat up valuable time in consecutive Central Committee meetings, talking about Taiwan as Oregon continues to sink to the bottom, continue to personally attack the messenger (me), blather on about Easter Egg hunts on the White House lawn….

Nobody cares. No one is listening.

Let’s save our energy for what we CAN do that will actually matter. We’ve got elections to win and a state to save. We grassroots Trumpsters have got work to do.

Let’s stop being distracted by an ORP leadership that doesn’t lead.

ORP Executive leadership can face the music in the next ORP elections. Maybe after that, the whole management structure of the organization can be rebuilt from the ground up.

But until then,  Diana and I are not going to let them distract us anymore.

Second, let’s forge a new path by building a grassroots forum specifically for the 90% of Oregon Republican voters who support our President – and the 2017 ORP Platform as it’s written. This is the enormous chunk of conservative Republican voters who have had no other place to go. In contrast to the decay and collapse of the ORP Executive leadership, our 90% pro-Trump contingent is on-fire, animated and powerful – matching the intensity of 90% of Republicans in the rest of the country.

Over 100,000 of you are already on board this MOGA2020 train.

Through our  MOGA2020 organization, we’ll work hard to find and place Republican candidates in 100% of our House districts, not just 75% of them. Also, in some cases – statewide, Executive, House and Senate – we’ll endorse primary candidates.

Let’s stick together, work with reality, and forge ahead confidently.

Get yourself on the mailing list and Like the Facebook page. It’s the sheer numbers within our movement that count the most.

President Trump’s reelection matters like nothing else. And of course, the re-taking of our state political leadership in Salem is critical. Diana and I think an Oregon Red Trifecta IS attainable relatively soon, especially because the Democrat Party is undergoing a profoundly idiotic implosion at the same time our President’s successes mount.

NOW is the time to strike!

We posed some questions to the Executive Committee in the previous post and on our website). Part of one of those questions is worth repeating here, slightly paraphrased:

“…one could legitimately ask the ORP Executive Committee, why have you performed so poorly over such a wide spectrum of issues, points, and protocols? And so, the logical next question is…has all of this been on purpose? Is the utter failure of the ORP Executive Committee on so many levels, over so many years, by design?”

Has our party been hijacked and then neutered by a select few? You decide.

And what specifically can you do right now to help? Very simple. Just sign up on our email mailing list at www.makeoregongreatagain.com.

No need to send us money. It’s our numbers that give us power.

More to come soon. Stay tuned.

-Sam and Diana Carpenter

*This is important. Pages that have been “click-farmed” rarely exceed a total of 15,000 to 16,000 followers because engagement ratios drop below 1% at approximately this total. At a less than 1% engagement level, Facebook algorithms ruthlessly restrict “reach,” punishing  a Pages operator who has employed this deceitful tactic. With Facebook, it’s pretty much impossible to ever recover from this faux-pas. Note that the ORP Page and the Buehler Page are each at about 15K followers. Oregon Republican League’s open Page is also at 15K. And Greg Wooldridge’s now defunct Facebook Page was approaching 15K when he deleted it in June 2018, just after the gubernatorial primary election. That’s four out of the five major Oregon Republican Facebook Pages stalled at 15K followers. There are other minor establishment sites that are stuck at around 15K too, e.g. Bill Post’s and Bud Pierce’s political Pages. On these sites, you will notice that interactions with posts  involve the same few dozen and up to 300 followers, over and over again. Coincidence or click-farmed? You decide. Go here for more about click-farming: https://dazeinfo.com/2016/05/28/facebook-click-farms-fraudulent-likes-hurting-brands/ And here: https://ppcprotect.com/what-is-a-click-farm/ Wikipedia’s take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_farm

8/19/2019

Adapted from the Making Reality Great Again Facebook post of 8/19/2019

Not officially affiliated with the ORP Central Committee, nor an office holder, now I find myself a grassroots blogger. We have over 100,000 Oregon direct subscribers and reach in excess of 400,000 Oregon Republicans every month. That’s a decent audience.

One of my favorite quotes is Stephen Covey’s, “Begin with the End in Mind.” That is actually a Chapter title in his Seven Habits book. So, what is the “end” goal of this post? Simply to put every question about the ORP Executive Committee’s performance in one place. By doing this, perhaps a chink will appear in the armor of the Oregon Republican Party’s Executive Committee leadership.

Regarding ORP leadership, someone has to do the critique and perhaps I am the most qualified outsider to do it. But then again, I’ve been deep inside the political meat grinder as both a US Senate candidate and a gubernatorial candidate (2016 and 2018).

I know exactly how the sausage is made.

Do I care what the ORP Executive Committee thinks of me? Nope. For one thing, I’ve been “thoroughly vetted.” So, they don’t intimidate me even a little bit. And more importantly, the utter political devastation we’ve sustained here in Oregon over the last decade, much of which has to do with the ORP’s complete failure as an organization, has reduced the ORP’s engagement with regular Oregon Republican voters to virtually zero.

The Executive Committee will hammer me personally because they will have no good answers for the questions I ask here (Yes, of course that’s the way the Democrat Progressive Left operates. Attack the messenger personally with whatever can be conjured up.)

In any case, this post is about the ORP Executive Committee – our ORP’s very top official leadership. Not me.

I am not interested in leading the official ORP organization or in running for office in this cycle. But as ORP constituents – Diana and I are just two of over 701,000 total voting Republicans in the state – we have some legitimate questions that perhaps some Central Committee members could ask their Executive Committee.

In order to assume a proper big-picture perspective, before reading the Executive Committee questions we list below, there are a couple of questions you might first ask yourself: in Salem, have Oregon Republicans ever been politically weaker or more humiliated than they are now? And then ask yourself, is there any evidence that via our current leadership, will things will get any better in the near future?

Chronicled in our literally thousands of social media and one-on-one chats with Oregon Republican grassroots voters over the last three years, here are questions we’ve been asked, and now we direct them to the ORP Executive Committee:

1. Here’s the most frequently asked overview/general question: why has Democrat Leftist influence been tolerated by the ORP Executive Committee, while conservatism has been downplayed? When has that posture won us even one significant election? Why does ORP leadership continue to push the party to the left when that stance has always failed, leading Oregon to this awful place?
2. The Trump factor: while literally 90% of Oregon Republicans have supported Donald Trump from the beginning (a statistic consistent with the rest of the country), why did ORP leadership virtually ignore the man for literally two and a half years, from his nomination in July 2016 all the way through to the first week of January 2019 when my pro-Trump slate challenged their never-Trump leadership (that is headed up by Solomon Yue, Bill Currier, Tracy Honl, and indirectly by Knute Buehler – who, BTW,  literally hates our President)? Why did the ORP state party Executive Committee pretend Donald Trump didn’t exist for all that time? (Yes, ORP leadership is flat-out fibbing when they proclaim otherwise. This history of the regime’s non-support of our President has been carefully documented; is easily available to anyone via simple online research. I also precisely detail this in my book, Make Oregon Great Again.)
3. Why have influential and respected conservatives (e.g. Marylin Shannon and Patti Adair), been banished from state ORP leadership? Did this happen so the Executive Committee could finally become a solid bastion of “moderates”?
4. Why did the Executive Committee tolerate 2018 gubernatorial nominee Knute Buehler’s shameless rejection of the 2017 ORP platform? And why did the Executive Committee silently stand by to watch him execute his multi million-dollar primary campaign strategy of flat-out deceit?
5. If the ORP insists it stands neutral in primary elections, why did an Executive Committee member endorse Knute Buehler early-on in the 2018 gubernatorial primary campaign?
6. Before mounting a recall effort against Kate Brown, did anyone on the Executive Committee investigate what the actual outcome of a successful recall would be? Did the Committee not understand that an unsuccessful recall would demoralize our base, and that a successful one would do exactly the same because it would give us an incumbent democrat Governor Tobias Read to deal with in 2022? Doesn’t the ORP brass understand that facing an incumbent in that race would be a huge disadvantage for Republicans? (The recall effort, sexy as it sounds, is unquestionably a chaos-inducing, energy-draining lose-lose for Oregon Republicans. Why did ORP leadership make this move, especially when another identical effort was already underway? Our very top ORP leaders are smart political people. I think they knew the various negative outcomes full-well…especially the fact that this effort is distracting Oregon Republican voters from what really matters: electoral victories in 2020 and 2022.
7. Why is communicating with regular Oregon Republican voters of such low priority and happen so infrequently?
8. In 2018, why did 25% of House districts have no Republican candidate at all?
9. What is the ORP doing to recruit and promote candidates for this upcoming most important election of our lifetimes? Or, diabolical as it sounds, and as I mentioned above, is the useless recall effort intended to divert grassroots energy, time and enthusiasm away from finding good candidates for those elections?
10. Why does the ORP website continue to be so seriously outdated (e.g. still listing 2018 AND 2016(!) candidates, not listing Executive Committee members, with important links still “under construction” as they were two and even four years ago?
11. And this: In the February 15, 2019 Executive election meeting, why did Chairman Bill Currier publicly promise the entire Central Committee, and I only slightly paraphrase him here, “The big donors are lining up to contribute! They just want to know they have two more years of my leadership! My first four years as Chair were carefully executed to lead up to this crescendo of contributions in my third term!” The facts: since that meeting and his re-election, per ORESTAR, a total of twenty-three ORP contributions totaling $17,000 have been gathered. $9,000 of that total came from Greg Walden, and a few true-believers including Greg Barreto and a couple of other individuals, the Baker County Republicans, the Marion County Republicans, etc. This means that, beyond those in-the-bag contributions, Chair Currier has gathered a total of $8,000 in individual contributions in the past seven months…after he, as I said, openly declared there would be substantial contributions immediately upon his reelection for a third-term. And for that matter, does anyone really believe he personally solicited even those few dollars? OK, let’s say he did – and we are being way too generous in this – he only raised $8,000 in seven months? WHY did Chair Currier mislead the Central Committee about his intent and/or his ability to raise money? (In most state Republican Party organizations, raising funds is the primary duty of the Chair). And a pointed question to the Central Committee itself: why did two-thirds of you believe him? (Note: In contrast to Bill Currier, past ORP Chair Perry Atkinson single-handedly raised multiple millions of dollars during his tenure. No wonder the ORP has been on the brink of insolvency for so long. Go here to ORESTAR see the numbers for yourself.)
12. And put this one under the you-must-think-we’re-all-stupid category. How can political candidates’ USPS postage mailing expenditures, channeled through the ORP’s non-profit status, be classified as successful fund-raising by Bill Currier?
13. Is the above maneuvering even legal?
14. Why is ORP social media such a train-wreck, reaching less than one-tenth of one percent of Oregon Republicans? (That percentage is not a misprint. This point is important enough that I will cover it in a post to be published two days from now.
15. And here are some elephant-in-the-living room summary questions. How does the Executive Committee explain its massive failure-to-perform over the years? Why has Oregon sunk low enough to join only two other states that have Blue Trifecta super-majority governments (California and Illinois)? Why haven’t we been able to replace a seriously horrible governor who should have been easy to defeat? In other words, why has ORP leadership performed so miserably in its duty to protect and promote its Republican constituency and for that matter, every Oregonian no matter their political affiliation? And why has this profound failure-to-deliver not ended the terms of the entire ORP Executive board in this most recent round of elections? If ORP leadership was a basketball team, this management team would have been dismissed years ago…And, this: In reviewing the above horror-story, one could legitimately ask the Executive Committee, why have you performed so poorly over such a WIDE spectrum of issues, points, and protocols? And so, after all that, the logical next question is…could all of this dysfunction be on purpose? Is the utter failure of the ORP Executive Committee on so many levels, over so many years, by design? If so, who at the very top of the Executive Committee is behind this nefarious stratagem?

I’m just sayin’…

And if I was a member of the Central Committee, I’d also be wondering how many Oregon Republicans actually give a hoot about the official Oregon Republican Party leadership and ORP Platform.  In my next post I’ll answer this question with real numbers. In advance, I’ll tell you here that the give-a-hoot contingent is far less than 500 total across the entire state.

OK. Here’s one big final question for you, the reader: if ORP leadership has zero communication with literally 99.9% of Oregon Republicans, the Platform is ignored, and the party itself is paralyzed and dysfunctional on so many levels, how do we regular Republican Trump-supporting grassroots voters untangle ourselves from this ORP leadership charade?

So, for now, as members of the Oregon Republican grassroots, we challenge the Central Committee to go deep, asking the questions that matter to their Executive Committee; to consider the end-game and to not let obvious reality be swept under the carpet yet again.

-sam carpenter

Roseburg Beacon Editorial 02/06/2019

An uncompromising conservative former candidate for governor is vying for control of the Oregon Republican Party — foreshadowing whether the state GOP will move to the right in the wake of the last election.

Bend businessman Sam Carpenter calls himself a “Forever Trumper” and makes no secret of his opposition to mainstay Democratic policies like access to abortion and same-sex marriage.

The second-place finisher in the 2018 Republican primary blames ruling class elites for the failed gubernatorial bid of former State Rep. Knute Buehler, who was largely viewed as a moderate inside the party.

“The Democrats ended up laughing at him, and the Republicans ended up sneering at him,” Carpenter said of Buehler during an interview. “Of course he lost.”

Carpenter is gunning for the seat occupied by Bill Currier, a Benton County Republican running for his third two-year term as chair of the state party. Currier owns an IT business and is mayor of Adair Village, a city of less than 1,000.

Read more

Roseburg Beacon Editorial 11/14/2018