Chairman Kushner responds to WW Editorial

In case you missed the "rogue of the year" article in Willamette Week published December 31, 2008, here is a link to it.

The following is the letter Chairman Jay Kushner wrote in response.

To the Editor of Willamette Week:
Thanks for wishing us luck along with your Rogue of the Year Award. But it is not so much luck that the Republican Party needs as a fair and independent administration of elections in Oregon. Your Rogue essay is a classic case of blaming the victim for the political brutality of Oregon’s Ruling Party.
Willamette Week has done more than its share to create a one-party monopoly of power in Oregon. WW has never turned its attention to the use of campaign finance laws by the One Party State as a weapon to silence those who would work against its authority. Harry Truman said that “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures”. Where is your editorial board as the Secretary of State methodically butchers the constitutional rights of Oregonians to raise ballot initiatives while the Democratic Legislature cynically writes distorted ballot titles and legally forbids challenge?
WW’s devotion to diversity includes gender, race, income and an anthology of other causes but draws the line at a diversity of political opinion. WW has rarely endorsed a Republican candidate in Portland. Even statewide in the last election, with our economy clearly on the precipice of disaster, WW chose to endorse for State Treasurer a Democratic political opportunist instead of the best qualified candidate in decades – Republican Allan Alley – a skilled businessman with a veteran understanding of macro-economics. WW endorsed a Democratic Party crony to audit the State’s books.
Willamette Week dwells in that pantheon of journals that reverentially parrot the policies of Oregon’s power elite. Yes, your editor won a deserved Pulitzer Prize for exposing the founder of Democratic crony rule, Neil Goldschmidt; and WW has fun chastising sundry embezzlers. But when has Willamette Week ever challenged the fundamental policies of the one-party State? The mediocrity of Oregon public schools from K-to-college, the holy grail of land planning which has promoted rural poverty, the pathological hatred of cars – are all supported by WW in lock-step with the Democratic party.
An unholy alliance of self-serving interests has created in Oregon a Government-Social services-Public employees-Non profits cartel that is the power equal of the reviled military-industrial complex. Oregon’s peculiar brand of central economic planning has had tremendous success in de-industrializing the state and increasing the ranks of the needy to be “served” by the cartel’s social services providers. Problems must never be solved because that would threaten the relentless growth of this self-serving cartel and its insatiable appetite for more taxes.
Willamette Week has written off the Oregon Republican Party for dead. But we are rising again from the crypt. WW might take note that Republicans are the only organized opposition to one-party rule. Our party is resurrecting itself with sensible policies and a motivated base of younger voters who worry about the very survival of democracy in Oregon. We intend to challenge the one-party state. We invite Independents, lapsed Republicans and thoughtful Democrats to join our insurgence. A vibrant two-party system is the embodiment of the American checks-and-balances form of government. Our success will be to the benefit of all citizens who seek a restoration of the blessings of liberty in Oregon.
Jay Kushner
Chairman, Multnomah Republican Party