It must be a slow news week
Because all of the local weeklies are coming out with silly articles about Oregon politics. The Portland Tribune published their entry before Willamette Week was able to, but the WW entry has the air of a prizewinner already. This one (which is already being hyperventilated over by Oregon Evil Party members like it was a new [and not-yet debunked] John Lott tract about how guns are like pretty flowers) shows a picture of the state of Oregon being painted red by a vaguely satanic looking elephant (which is turned half away from the picture, so you can't see the "I [heart] Torture!" button.)
Um, this is news? The flipover of rural counties from Stupid to Evil Party (done in lockstep with the Evil Party policies that impoverished and depopulated them, which is a pretty good stunt) isn't something that just happened. But this breathless article says that the red counties are seeing Huge! Population! Increases! and there might be more Republicans than Democrats in Oregon soon, because, mysteriously, people just aren't joining the new model (curled up in a whimpering ball, crying "don't hurt me" and promising to sell someone down the river whenever a member of the Evil Party walks by) Democratic Party.
There are some funnily annoying things about this article, too. Some Reed professor claims that Portland voters are "liberal, but also libertarian [...] they don't want to pay taxes or be told what to do," in the context of Portland voters approving the ancien regime law (measure 37, which puts a class system into the Oregon constitution) and the hate amendment (which writes discrimination, you guessed it, into the Oregon constitution.) You might think that the libertarian approach would disapprove of government-mandated discrimination, but here in the real world "libertarian" simply means "secular Republican", and trivialities such as civil and property rights just get in the way (yes, I deliberately include property rights, because measure 37 does not give me the right to develop my property in the way I choose, because I am a recent immigrant. You'd think that a "real" libertarian would have kittens about this, but, no, this is not the case.)
The chirpy postscript to the article is, of course, from some Evil Party shill who forsees an endless future of Evil Party boots trampling Oregon into a bright new future of 5-acre miniranches as far as the eye can see. And this would be different from the current situation in what way? The urban areas of the Willamette Valley are already subsidizing the rest of the state (thank you measure five!), so Salem (which, as befitting a city that contains the state government and has more than its fair share of libertarians firmly attached to the government teat, is an Evil Party city) can continue to screw over Portland because, hey, the subsidies are in place and where else will the liberals go? Measure 36 has already enshrined hatred into the state constitution, and if you moved up here since the day when Tom McCall (a REPUBLICAN, from back in the days when you'd occasionally find Republicans who weren't pathetic totalitarians) signed the urban growth boundary bill you already don't have the rights that the (rich and well connected; if you're poor, it doesn't matter if you've been in the Pacific Northwest since 8000BC) old timers have. About all Oregon doesn't have are anti-abortion bills (yet) and an act making some christian sect the official religion of the state.
Oh, boo hoo, the Republicans are coming, and I should be scared. The Democratic Party doesn't strike me as an organization that is capable of defending me from the industrial-scale corruption and Taliban-style morality that is all the Evil Party can offer, so why should I care about their declining voter registrations?