Reply #11: See my last paragraph [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

I'm talking about the rural voters, not the party itself.

The combination of low taxes and no government regulations PLUS medical marijuana and assisted suicide is libertarian, not current Bush-style GOP, since the national party plays to the Puritan contingent.

I lived in small towns in Oregon from 1984 to 1993 and then in Portland from 1993 to 2003. Now I'm in Minnesota, where the Republicans are more strongly tinged with Christian fundamentalism and happily borrow to fund the state or pass costs on to local governments. For example, there's a commuter rail project proposed for the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis. The Republicans are okay with it, probably because they can see possibilities for their friends to make money. Contrast that with the steady opposition of Oregon Republicans to expanding MAX.

Quite a different approach and more typical of the nation as a whole.

I was living in a small town in Oregon when the first OCA-sponsored anti-gay legislation was narrowly defeated (1991, was it?), and my impression was that the anti-gay sentiments were inspired not by religion (since religious people were a minority, although what religious people existed tended to be more in the Mormon/fundie vein than in the mainstream Protestant or Catholic vein) but by lumberjack or cowboy machismo being whipped up by the fundies. The OCA's line for general public consumption was "Prevent gays and lesbians from molesting or recruiting your children," not "Leviticus condemns it."

Living in rural Oregon, I thought for sure that the 1991 measure was going to pass. Fortunately, Portland and the college towns defeated it, as they did the 1994 measure. Frankly, I was surprised that the most recent measure passed.