Republicans are off track

It's a sad time to be a Republican elected official these days, at least on the national stage. If you think a path different from the Tea Party approach would be better for the country, you voice the idea at peril of a "truer" conservative in your primary. If you don't pass the purity tests by voting the "right" way or don't sign the loyalty oaths and parrot the correct phrases (e.g., "job-killing taxes"), you're not a "real" Republican.

For the last couple of decades the Republican Party has moved to purify itself. Different voices are more rarely heard, and activists find primary opponents for any official deemed a RINO (Republican in name only). Intolerance has become the trademark of the party. And now, there is a further rightward shift, with the Tea Party being the tail that wags the Republican dog.

Tea Party Republicans want much, much smaller government. They have a vision of a simpler age with nothing much more than national defense funded by Congress. With this in mind, they're quite willing to shut down the "nonessential" government if they don't get their way. And the leadership in the House, including our own Greg Walden, are caught between following the Tea Party line with the fear that they might harm millions of Americans, or compromising with Democrats and being attacked as not being true Republicans.

The world is more complex than it was in 1789. Removing the EPA doesn't mean we'll have 18th-century pollution levels. Getting rid of the FDA would be good for some companies but at a cost in lives. I think most of us want food and drugs we can trust. Business, and small business especially, needs a level playing field, but does it really need all those regulations? What's wrong with monopoly, price fixing, cartels, driving opponents out of business and a 60-hour week? Not to mention child labor? And if there's a disaster, should the government be expected to help? I suspect most of us think there are valid government roles beyond simple

defense.

The Tea Party seems to hate taxes with intensity, I suspect partly because taxes enable government, but more because they think individuals would have more money. But with less education, less infrastructure, less research, will Americans have the skills to make even as much as they do today, or businesses get started with ideas that grow and employ high-wage workers?

Taxes are the way we get together as a society to pay for common goals. What's important is that taxes be fair, and the common goals should be in the national interest. It's through taxes that we build and maintain an interstate highway system, find better treatments for cancer, make sure our food is safe, provide regulators that keep large companies from unfairly stifling smaller ones, protect us from those who would do us harm, and expand the frontiers of science and create new

technologies.

The Tea Party vision is rooted in unreality. And yet, this is the direction the Republican Party is heading, being lead in a downward purity spiral by Tea Party fundamentalists.

What we need is something different. We need a party that is a reasonable alternative to the Democrats. We need a party that will again include and inspire and respect leaders like Bob Packwood, Mark Hatfield and Tom McCall and Abraham Lincoln. We need a party whose elected representatives advocate better and more efficient government, who vote for the good of their constituents and the country, and who recognize good ideas even if they come from an opposing party and do not simply pursue partisan

gain.

Our country faces many problems. Ignoring them, turning to an unreal image of the past, shutting down dissent, denying science, are not going to help.

The Republican Party should dissolve and reorganize on the principle of more efficient and more effective government - but a government that works for a first-world country in the 21st century.