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Friday, March 17th, 2023

Partisan rancor in Oregon spills over into Idaho effort to absorb its rural neighbors

Author:     Kyung Lah and Jack Hannah
Source:     CNN
Publication Date:     Wed March 15, 2023 | 8:40 PM EDT
 Link: Partisan rancor in Oregon spills over into Idaho effort to absorb its rural neighbors
Stephan:  

So powerful is the culture war in the U.S. that this Oregon-Idaho border issue is an extreme example of the Red Blue Great Schism Trend. I think this may be where we are headed, a realignment of state borders. That is not secession. I don't think the culture war is going to dissipate, and it is going to result in borders changes because we are two worlds now. What the people of the Red states don't seem to understand, however, is that the Blue states underwrite their wellbeing. Red states take out more from the treasury than they deposit, and the difference is largely made up by the fact that the Blue states take out less than they deposit. 

 

 Greater Idaho Movement sign seen at Wheeler County Trading Co., in Mitchell, Oregon. Credit: Kyung Lah/CNN

Matt McCaw cringes if you say the word “secessionist” around him.

A native of eastern Oregon, McCaw is a mild-mannered, former high school math teacher who fosters children to help his community.

“We don’t think of ourselves as a secessionist movement. We see ourselves as a self-determination movement,” McCaw said of the Greater Idaho Movement, which seeks to move the Idaho state line west to include more than half of Oregon.

What would have previously been brushed off as a fringe proposition to add the predominantly Republican region of eastern Oregon into conservative Idaho has lunged forward in the Idaho state legislature. There have been plenty of other attempts across the country to break off pieces of states to try to join more politically analogous ones, but this one has advanced the furthest. The measure passed the state House last month and advanced to the state Senate, where it sits in committee, with the session expected to wrap by the end of March.

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1 Comment

  1. Albus Eddie on Friday, March 17, 2023 at 5:58 am

    This trend is exacerbated by the fact that two political parties are unable to accommodate the variety of political viewpoints in this country. It is the structure that is rotten.