Over at National Review, Dan McLaughlin accuses Democrats of being unfair:
Have you heard? Republicans are threatening democracy and are probably racist and transphobic for trying to expel state legislators who don’t abide by the rules of their chambers and disrupt legislative business — and now they’re trying to kick nearly an entire caucus out of a state legislature it controls!
Well, except that the move to wipe out a whole legislative caucus is being done by Democrats.... We are yet again reminded that the rules are all Calvinball to Democrats and their mouthpieces in the national political press. They mean none of it, ever.
That sounds bad. But maybe you'd like to hear the actual story here?
Oregon is a Democratic state, something that Republicans obviously don't like much. So, since they can't win actual elections, Republican legislators have developed a habit of leaving the state en masse to prevent the legislature from reaching the quorum it needs to do business. This got tiresome, so last year Oregon voters approved Measure 113, which bars members from reelection if they miss ten or more legislative sessions. It was enormously popular, passing by a whopping 68-32% margin.
Republican legislators thumbed their noses at it. In May they walked out again for 42 days. As a result, they are barred from running for reelection in 2024 (or possibly not until 2026 depending on how a court case turns out).
In other words, "Democrats" aren't doing anything. Obviously Measure 113 was their idea, but it was approved overwhelmingly by the public and its penalties were well known to the Republicans who walked out. They were automatically disqualified from reelection by law—enforced by the Secretary of State—not by a partisan vote in the legislature.
This all seems straightforward enough, but McLaughlin thinks it's outrageous because....
....It's not clear, really. The closest he comes to a reason is that Republicans used their walkouts as a way of "stymieing extreme Democratic proposals on abortion, guns, transgender surgeries, and other issues." It's not clear to me why he thinks this is a reason the law shouldn't apply.
McLaughlin is an odd duck. In former days he was a relatively moderate conservative, but he has since moved to National Review and become outraged about absolutely everything Democrats do. This is life in Donald Trump's Republican Party, I guess, even if you don't like Trump yourself.