The Hijacking and the Neutering of the Oregon Republican Party

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