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Party politics erased from editorial masthead
Editorial, McMinnnville, Ore., N-R/News-Register, 7/12/2015
For nearly 90 years, the News-Register and its Telephone-Register predecessor declared themselves “An independent Republican newspaper” on their editorial page masthead.
Effective today, for reasons transcending political ideology, we are dropping that elephant-in-the-room declaration. Altering the masthead to “An independent Oregon newspaper” does not represent a change in political belief. Nor does it represent a withdrawal of allegiance from a particular political party, because, for all practical purposes, that ship sailed long ago.
Rather, it indicates a withdrawal from “partyism” in general, out of a belief that partisanship has increasingly been eating away at the social and political fabric of this great country. The independent or moderate faction of the Republican Party was the faction of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Nelson Rockefeller and other venerable figures in our nation’s history.
Roosevelt struck a chord with American newspaper publishers at the beginning of the 20th century by denouncing corporate evils while promoting the middle-class dream and the belief that sizeable
governance can be good. In his book, “Purging the Republican Party — Tea Party Campaigns and Elections,” Ronald Libby describes followers of moderate Republican thinking as moderate to conservative fiscally, liberal culturally and committed to government investment in the environment, health care, infrastructure and education.
Oregon has a rich history of moderate Republicans, with beloved maverick Tom McCall perhaps standing the tallest. But the state GOP was taken over in the early 1990s by socially conservative ideologues, relegating the moderate Republican philosophy that once held sway in Oregon and the nation to a historical footnote. We used to live in a time marked by civil discourse. Now we live in one marked by hypermoralized politics.
New York Times columnist David Brooks said in a column published last year: “Partyism is the new racism, a method of exclusion ... . More people are building their communal and social identities around political labels. Your political label becomes the prerequisite for membership in your social set. ... Those who are not members of the right party are deemed to lack basic compassion, or basic loyalty to country.”
The column goes on to cite this piece of head-turning Bloomberg View polling data: “In 1960, roughly 5 percent of Republicans and Democrats said they’d be displeased if their child married someone from the other party. By 2010, 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they would mind.”
In this climate, the News-Register editorial board finds little use for an “independent Republican” description. Ironically, our use of the term “Republican” has angered not only Democrats, but also Republicans finding us not sufficiently dogmatic.
There is one glimmer of hope in state politics — the Independent Party of Oregon, which earned major party status this year. Perhaps this party’s rise will expose some glaring holes in Oregon’s often heads-down political bulldozing.
As a family-owned newspaper with no allegiance to any national brand or chain, we will continue to embrace the “independent” element of our historic label, reflecting our view that the purpose of this public forum is to promote doing the right thing, not merely arguing rigid ideologies.
