Confessions of a RINO

 "I'm still a Republican, and I hope the party reforms from within."

        Tam Moore, veteran journalist

The Republican Party has changed in the past quarter century. We saw it in the enthusiasm for Pat Buchanan--but his call for culture warfare was a minority taste within the GOP in 1992. We saw it again, louder, in the enthusiasm for Sarah Palin who brought excitement to the McCain campaign in 2008; a great many voters saw her shameless ignorance as a positive. Then Trump. It wasn't Reagan's Morning in America party anymore.

Tam Moore has participated in American democracy as a soldier, a candidate, an officeholder, a journalist, and an active volunteer and civic leader.

No need to introduce him. He tells his story himself. 

Guest Post by Tam Moore

“Confessions of a RINO”

My first presidential election was in 1956, at Eureka, California. I was training in the television and radio business after graduating from college. I guess I picked Republican when I registered with Fred Moore, the County Clerk, because it seemed like a good choice.
Dwight Eisenhower was president and running for re-election. My vote for Ike was one of 19,019 cast that November in Humboldt County.

At Oregon State College, where I studied natural resources and spent the previous four years writing for the college’s daily newspaper, partisanship wasn’t an issue. We covered whoever came to campus, Republican or Democrat. We reported a verbal dustup and pushing match between a student and Senator Wayne Morse, then tracked the senator down for a comment while he did a campaign stop in neighboring Linn County. National politicians made regular campus appearances with appropriate coverage in the paper.

The head of my college journalism program took a leave of absence in 1956 to be staff to an incoming Republican governor. That influenced me. Professor Fred Shidler was a family friend as well as a darn good teacher. We learned that great journalism doesn’t take sides. The reporter listens and tries to reflect multiple dimensions in the story that’s written—there almost always two or more storylines intertwine. Always seeking the facts, we tried to report what really happened, what was really said or written, the correct numbers.

We also learned that a democratic government functions well when people know ahead of time the issues their elected officials are tackling. Feedback from the electorate informs this “government of the people, by the people.” Mis-information is the enemy of a functioning democracy.

Oregon Republicans and Democrats got on well back then. Those Rs were moderate, sometimes downright progressive, Republicans. These days the talk radio and Fox talking-head commentators would call them RINO “Republican in Name Only.”

That probably fit me, too, then and fits me 65 years later.

I graduated from college with a commission in the Army and a sense of duty to my country. For five years before that I did seasonal work for the U.S. Forest Service, making stewardship of the nation’s physical resources a part of my being. The Army trained me as an infantry small-unit commander, then sent me to the reserves as I took up my career in journalism on California’s North Coast.

Partisan wasn’t the flavor of politics in those days, although some of the notables such as Pat Brown –he knew how to turn his head your direction for the best photograph--and William Fife Knowland stood out. Sen. Knowland was floor manager for passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

When the Berlin wall went up in 1961, my reserve unit was activated. I remained on active duty for six years, returning to civilian life and to Oregon in 1967. Covering local and state government let me see the working of retail politics – the stuff which motivates people to make the choices when the vote. When a veteran county commissioner retired, I took a break from journalism and won a four-year term on the Jackson County Board of Commissioners – as a Republican serving with two Democrats.

About the only partisan thing I did of significance was introduce President Gerald Ford at a Medford rally when he ran in 1976—Jimmy Carter won that election. My own try at re-election failed in 1978. Among the local issues playing out in that year’s May primary election was abortion – the legislature was tweaking Oregon’s law. For a time Oregon suspended funding the procedure for women entitled to state-paid medical care. Jackson County Commissioners decided to pick up the tab for legal medical care. That created enough of a fuss among Republicans that I lost in the primary – and went back to journalism.

So I worry about government spending, and celebrate when money is spent wisely. Appropriating funds at any level of government without having a reasonable, workable plan of what’s to be accomplished is bad stewardship. Bypassing the electorate, as is popular these days with Oregon local governments levying “systems development” charges or extra fees tacked on to municipal utility bills, erodes public participation in government decision-making. Medford, where I live, just did it again with a scheme to build a $60 million aquatics and event center on the back of adding a couple dollars to the monthly utility bill. That will retire revenue bonds which pay for actual construction. Voters were cut out of the process. Taxation without an election.

What’s to be made of the cult-like “base” of today’s Republicans, so far removed from the party birthed in 1854 (in Ripon, Wisconsin) by Northerners tired of three decades’ wrangling over slavery and resulting fractionalization of national political parties? First, I like to have a voice in picking candidates at the primary election – so in Oregon I need to register in a major party if I’m to participate. Altering voter registration to “no preference” lets me have a say on a handful of judicial and other non-partisan elective offices at primary time. You’ve heard a discouraged voter say “they are both the same” when talking about differences between our big major parties. There’s a basis for that observation. Both run attack ads, which erode confidence in not only opposition candidates but those who govern. Both run the U.S. Senate like its primary purpose is to make the sitting president look bad so voters will favor the opposition party at the next election. (Is there really much difference between the political hard-ball Harry Reid played and that now shown by Mitch McConnell?)

To me, the legislative history of the national Republican Party took a steep downhill dive in 1995 when the House with its newly-seated GOP majority and Newt Gingrich wielding the speaker’s gavel set out on what looked on paper like a responsible conservative agenda –called The Contract with America. What that turned into a few months later was a shutdown of the federal government which extended into 1996.

Instead of Rs and Ds figuring out how to make government work, they switched to making the other party look bad. Topping the list was a Republican Senate majority denying a hearing to Barrack Obama’s last Supreme Court nominee, then a few years later speeding a Trump nominee to the bench in record time. Hypocrisy describes it. Failing to uphold the Constitution is the result.

And no wonder folks become cynical when talking about their government.

We’ve had federal shutdowns of one kind or another in 2013, one each 2017 through 2019, and were within days of one in 2021 when the sitting president signaled in late December he didn’t like the budget deal Congress presented; he relented. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced a Shutdown Prevention Act (S.105) in the current Congress. It’s awaiting consideration by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Here in Oregon, partisan legislators don’t want to work toward common solutions, so the minority Republicans literally leave the state, denying the majority a quorum. Texas Democrats just did it too, last month at the end of their regular session.

Where’s the hope for democracy?

If we look to American history, national political parties evolve over time. Local and state issues are the lens through which voters select those sent to Congress; often how candidates measure up on regional issues is much more important to voters than how candidates might interact in the national legislative bodies.

So I won’t reject my party—as some folks have done in these times. I’m still a Republican and I hope the party reforms from within.  Left to partisans on the extreme fringes, either party might coalesce around a demagogue. We saw this happen. Our former president is back on the campaign trail.

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