{"id":28763,"date":"2020-05-21T15:15:22","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T20:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=28763"},"modified":"2020-05-21T15:15:22","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T20:15:22","slug":"the-2020-senate-campaign-oregon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/05\/21\/the-2020-senate-campaign-oregon\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Senate Campaign: Oregon"},"content":{"rendered":"

In news that is initially fairly dull, we now know that Senator Merkley (D-OR) will be defending his seat<\/a> against Jo Rae Perkins (R-OR) in November:<\/p>\n

Oregon Republicans on Tuesday elected a Senate nominee who believes in QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that has taken root among some far-right supporters of President Trump.<\/p>\n

Jo Rae Perkins bested three other candidates to win the GOP nomination to face Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in November.<\/p>\n

In a now-deleted video posted to her Twitter account Tuesday night, Perkins said she supports the conspiracy theory, which revolves around \u201cQ,\u201d an anonymous Internet user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we go one, we go all,\u201d Perkins said in the video, reciting a QAnon slogan. \u201cI stand with President Trump. I stand with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots. And together, we can save our republic.\u201d\u00a0[WaPo<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, really? Isn’t the QAnon<\/em> conspiracy theory just about the same as the President’s anonymous validators<\/em>, people from the Democrats who, the President claims, are calling him and telling he’s doing great? He’s also done this with businesspeople. Never a name, but boy ain’t he doing great?<\/em> Rather the same for QAnon<\/em> – never a name, never any corroborating evidence, just whispers in the ears of the credulous.<\/p>\n

WaPo<\/strong><\/em> notes the replacement message:<\/p>\n

In a statement Wednesday night, Perkins backtracked slightly from her comments, saying that she does not fully embrace QAnon.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be very clear, I do not believe everything from Q\/Anon and would never describe myself as a follower, but I also do not believe in infringing upon any outlet\u2019s right to discuss news or topics,\u201d Perkins said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Joe Rae Perkins<\/a> doesn’t appear to have a great deal of political experience: no elective office in civil government, and it wasn’t clear that she’d achieved an elective office in a commercial association. However, this lack is no longer an objection for the Republican Party; the more expert someone is, the more suspect they have become. In fact, this can be seen as a logical outcome of the old Republican oath, sometimes ignored by the oath-taker, of term-limits. While term-limits was meant to remove the old plaque build up in the heart of the nation, the emerging meme is that experience stands in the way of effective government.<\/p>\n

Which, when stated in that way, sounds like a whole lot of hogwash. It ignores the importance of experience and the judgment that experience can, but does not always, enable.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s possible she’s the best the Oregon Republicans have to offer, but nominating someone who gives credence to QAnon,<\/em> and hasn’t held any sort of elective office, for the United States Senate would have me putting my money on “Party in ruins, intellectually speaking”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In news that is initially fairly dull, we now know that Senator Merkley (D-OR) will be defending his seat against Jo Rae Perkins (R-OR) in November: Oregon Republicans on Tuesday elected a Senate nominee who believes in QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that has taken root among some far-right supporters \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28765,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28763\/revisions\/28765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}