California Progress Report
3 December 2007
I had to read it several times before I believed it. Here was the official policy document of the Oregon the Republican Party equating the Democratic Party with organized crime, drug cartels, and terrorist networks, and openly advocating the use of the police powers of the state against its political rivals. It wasn't just hateful. It wasn't just stupid. It was so stupidly hateful that it was chilling, like a kristallnacht in November nearly 70 years ago.
I sent out a message to my email list calling attention to this outrage. A few hours later, I sent an opinion-editorial to Randy Bayne, which he posted.
The blogosphere had a field day with the story. Within a couple of days the Oregon Republican Party platform was the talk of the Internet. One of many blog entries was by Jesus' General in an open letter to ORP executive director Amy Langdon on 27 November:
How many Young Republicans can you put on the street at any given moment to shut down a Democratic meeting? Are they well supplied? Do they have night sticks, tasers, pepper spray, brass knuckles, and Mayor Rudy's Little Black Book of 911 Quotations? Are they supplied with a fetching utility belt on which to carry these tools?
However, Jesus' General noted the next day that the offending reference had been removed, and other blogs stated that the Oregon Republican Party platform was changed by the evening of 27 November. Thus, it took me only two days to change the Oregon GOP platform, apparently without a meeting of its Platform Committee. Ha! Who's the Decider now, Dubya? Of course, I had a lot of help from Jesus' General and other commanders of the blogforce.
A Soviet historian once quipped that the most difficult problem in Soviet history was trying to predict it. Likewise, the history of the Oregon GOP is being rewritten as we speak. The rumor is now spreading around the blogosphere that the Oregon Republican Party's website was hacked, and that is how the reference to the Oregon Democratic Party was inserted into the platform. Not so fast, bub. There is such a thing as the Internet Archive, and it provides irrefutable evidence that the reference to the Oregon Democratic Party was in the Oregon Republicans' platform as early as March 2007.
Now, try to tell me that the Oregon GOP website was hacked nearly a year ago, and possibly even earlier, and the Republicans never noticed it until I pointed it out. Right.
FULL STORY
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