We like to celebrate President Trump’s wins. While he’s far from done, he’s brought a lot of good to this country. But Trump and Republicans are not winning everywhere. It’s important to look at where the right isn’t winning. There are plenty of blue states, and every one of those states is displaying terrifying levels of unlawfulness and abuse of power.
Rather than list a bunch of examples, we’re going to look at the most terrifying case. The Democrats in Oregon are trying to instill themselves as true dictators. This is the breaking point.
The Tyrant
If you’ve never heard the name Kate Brown before, she is the current governor of Oregon. She’s a Democrat (naturally), and, to the surprise of no conservatives ever, she’s abusing her position. Brown has recently ordered Oregon state police to hunt down and apprehend 11 state senators. All of those senators happen to be Republicans, of course. What is their crime? They have refused to vote in support of an environment bill.
Yes, this is seriously happening. The bill has already passed the Oregon house. When it went to the senate, there was supposed to a negotiation period to compromise on components of the bill. The Democrats tried to skip that section, so the Republicans walked out in protest and they haven’t been back since. Because of that, the governor of Oregon is having police try to bring them back to the chambers by force so she can get her job killing, climate change bill passed.
The Details
This leaves a lot of questions up in the air. Can the governor legally do this? The answer is, kind of. The Oregon constitution does have a provision that allows the governor to compel the attendance of legislators. Within that purview, she is legally abusing her authority.
That said, federal law is less clear. There is supposed to be a balance of power between the different branches of government, even at the state level, and arresting legislators who haven’t committed a crime is an overreach by pretty much any standard.
Federal law aside, Oregon has a long history of senators leaving the chambers in protest. In 2001, a group of Democrats did the same thing and delayed voting on a bill by more than a week. No one was arrested in that instance. The governor never even tried. What Brown is doing is at the very least a huge break from precedent.
Regardless, the Republicans actually anticipated this action. They taunted the governor via Twitter, suggesting that none of the senators in question are still in the state of Oregon.
One thing is certain. No law enforcement agency can arrest them and ‘compel’ them to attend a session now. Oregon police aren’t allowed to act outside of the state, and it is definitely illegal for federal officers or police in another state to intervene. At least Democratic tyranny is laughably predictable.
Why it Matters
This is more than a single story of a belligerent governor being outfoxed by state senators. Sure, that’s fun, but there are deeper undertones here. Brown is not an outlier, and that’s the scary truth.
For comparison, you can look at the behavior of Democrats in any state in the country. Stacy Abrams is still contesting the governor’s race in Georgia that she clearly lost because Democrats don’t actually care about votes. They care about power.
In New Mexico, Democrats forced votes on minimum wage and aggressive pro abortion laws by skipping time allotted for counter arguments. Thousands of citizens were prepared to present their case to the legislators, and the Democrats refused to let them speak.
Oregon is just the most extreme case. Dictating legislation at gunpoint is something all of us would have thought can’t happen in America. Here we are. When a governor can get away with this level of tyranny, we’re in a lot of trouble.
Imagine if President Trump tried this. Imagine if he had federal officers prevent Democrats from filibustering on immigration reform. We would have solved the border crisis, but he would also be completely crucified, and rightfully so.
This can’t be overstated. Democrats have spared no effort in proving to all of us that they don’t care about the rule of law. They don’t care about free and fair elections. They don’t care about anyone or anything in this country. They seek power at all cost, and they are arresting duly elected legislators (or at least trying to) in the pursuit of that power.
If they win the presidency, or the majority in both houses of Congress in 2020 you can rest assured that we’ll see this on the national stage. This is it. We are literally one election away from a nationwide police state and the true end to freedom. Now is not the time for passivity. Now is the time to take our country back.
