PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE:  This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

That question in the headline is hard to answer, especially as the impeachment trial looms in the U.S. Senate in only a few hours.

Over the past couple weeks, we have witnessed two actions by supposed Republican leaders in Congress – they considered removing Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from a leadership position for her vote to impeach Trump, and they left Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene in place on House committees to continue her diatribe against all things true and honest.

One possible answer is that Republicans are not thinking.

Another is that they are expressing fealty to the worst president in U.S. history, Donald Trump, who, to some in the party, still appears to be the leader of it.

Or, perhaps House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is trying to play both sides against the middle, and, thus, retain his leadership position – if you can call what he does leading.  He bows to the far right by supporting Greene, while saying he wants a big tent by not removing Cheney.

That’s called having it both ways.

By the way, I could often make the same claims about Democrats – they weren’t thinking or wanted to have it both ways.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson dealt with this when he wrote:

“On the morning of February 3, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sat in the Capitol Rotunda for a service honoring fallen U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died during the January 6 attack by domestic terrorists.

“On the evening of February 3, McCarthy asserted that the big tent of the Republican Party should include those who have advocated political violence.

“All in a day’s work for the United States’ most disgraceful political leader.

“The Republican legislator whom McCarthy has tried to shield from the consequences of sedition, Greene from Georgia, said in 2019 that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ‘guilty of treason . . . a crime punishable by death.’

“She endorsed the view that Pelosi might be quickly removed by ‘a bullet to the head.’   She approved of the suggestion that federal law enforcement agents hostile to then-President Donald Trump should be executed.  Responding to a proposal that former president Barack Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton be murdered, Greene wrote: ‘Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient.’”

In a move that illustrated punishment for bad deeds, after Republican leaders failed to act, the all Democrats and a few Republicans in the House stripped Greene of her committee assignments.  Of course, she reacted by saying that she’d go after Democrats, who knows by what means.

I suspect these shenanigans in D.C. were not the main reason why thousands of Oregonians have left the Republican Party, but perhaps they added to the distaste for intentional dissension.

The number of party defections was first reported last week as being about 6,000, then, a couple days later, grew to 11,000.  Probably still growing.

No wonder.

A close-to-home-reason for Oregon defections likely was that the official Republican Party in the state adopted a resolution calling the attack on the U.S. Capitol a “false flag” operation.

In response, Republicans in the Oregon House of Representatives distanced themselves from the state party and no less than long-time Republican Knute Buhler, who had run for governor and Congress, dispatched his Republican credentials to the dust-bin.  He said he no longer understood what the party stood for, if anything.

If I were a Republican, I’d do the same thing.  But I have been unaffiliated for many years now and like that ability to function as an independent. 

For me, independence is better that affiliation with either Republicans or Democrats, neither of which get credit from me for interest in good government for most Americans.

Meanwhile, even as I write this, impeachment will be front and center in D.C. today.

Democrats say the process will deter future impeachable acts late in a president’s term and they hope to put Republicans on the defensive by videos showing the January 6 riots fomented, they will say, by Trump.

Wall Street Journal editorial writers contend today that deterring future presidential illegal actions is unlikely if, as expected, Trump is acquitted. 

“A greater rebuke,” they add, “would come from letting Trump suffer in isolation, without power and with the stigma of a bi-partisan House impeachment vote.”

And, so goes our excuse for politics these days.