Candidates fire up GOP faithful

"Conjuring the image of America’s first great rabble-rouser, Thomas Paine, Republican congressional candidate Art Robinson urged a group of GOP loyalists Thursday night to rise up and vote “the professional politicians” out of Washington," reports Bennett Hall in the Corvallis Gazette Times on August 10, 2012.

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“I know it’s election season and everybody makes patriotic speeches,” he told more than 100 supporters gathered for the annual Benton County Republican Barbecue at the Wheeler Farm south of Corvallis.

“But this time the argument really is between liberty and tyranny.”

Robinson, a scientific researcher and home-school advocate from Cave Junction, is making his second run at the 4th District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives held by 13-term Democrat Peter DeFazio of Springfield.

While he didn’t mention his opponent by name, Robinson made several references to Paine and his Revolutionary War-era pamphlet “Common Sense” (a title Robinson borrowed for his new book) as he hammered at the current Congress over high taxes, ever-expanding government regulation and a soaring national debt.

“There’s a common-sense reaction to this, and that’s throw the bums out and get somebody else,” he said.

“We have to return to constitutional government, we have to get rid of the professional politicians and get back to the citizen volunteers who ran our government for the first 200 years.”

That was a common thread running through the evening, which started with a barbecued supper and ended with a rapid-fire succession of speeches from a bevy of Republicans running for local, state and national office.

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