They’re laughing, those 11 Republicans.

They know they’ve won this round, and you can hear the snickering from (400) miles away.

They outmaneuvered the Democrats’ Senate majority. After promising they would remain in Salem for the rest of the legislative session, the Republicans stood up Senate President Peter Courtney, then slapped him down.

Courtney has finally gone public with what the caucus has known for some time: The Democrats, 18 weak, don’t have the 16 votes needed to pass cap-and-trade, the climate bill that put the Republicans in flight.

So much for the emergency clause, quorum calls and negotiations via text. We know how this ends. The Democrats will cave. The Republicans will slip back across the border and buy a round for the lumberjacks in the dusty neighborhood saloon.

And the voters? They’ll remember. They’ll adjust. They’ll have their revenge.

They’ll remember how the Republicans framed this fight before they turned tail. As Allen Alley has argued, you can’t fault Senate Republicans for “using all the parliamentary tools at their disposal to highlight what they believe is awful legislation.”

Especially when Oregon Democrats have reached into the same toolbox.

But the Republicans didn’t stop there. Before he vanished, Brian Boquist, the Senate’s Red October, flooded the torpedo tubes and opened his outer doors.

If Oregon State troopers come after him, Boquist told KGW’s Pat Dooris, “Send bachelors and come heavily armed. I’m not going to be a political prisoner in the state of Oregon. It’s just that simple.”

Boquist wasn’t menacing Gov. Kate Brown or the 76-year-old Courtney. He was threatening Oregon State troopers, just about the only sentinels left in the rural counties that still send Republicans to the Capitol.

“I’m shocked and appalled that a state legislator would say he’s going to provide armed resistance when a state trooper asks him to come back and do his job,” Phil Zerzan, a 30-year OSP veteran, told me last week.

“It’s insane. If it’s rhetoric, it’s dangerous rhetoric. It sends a dangerous message. He’s a state legislator. We’re HIS Oregon State police.”

If any of his GOP colleagues were troubled by Boquist’s threats, they weren’t calling Lars on the burner phone.

Those threats were unique and cause for censure, but not the only reckless language in the mix. In years past, Knute Buehler was the rare GOP politician willing to call Donald Trump “a disgrace to the Republican Party.”

Yet here was Buehler over the weekend, donating $5,000 to the senators’ GoFindMe campaign and tweeting that “the extremism of the Portlandia agenda this legislative session has pushed Oregon into uncharted and treacherous territory.”

Treacherous? As in deceitful, subversive and treasonable? What the hell are you talking about, Knute?

So, yes, eleven Republicans are laughing. A few others are fomenting nonsense. I trust most Oregon voters, beleaguered conservatives among them, are filing all this away as reference material in the next election.

Let’s not forget the grand bargain that brought the Republicans back from their first legislative furlough. They only came out of hiding when Senate Democrats agreed to kill two bills that strengthened gun regulations and eliminated the state’s vaccine mandate.

You may feel abandoned out there in La Grande or Harney County. You may still be ticked about Hillary’s emails. Voting straight red may well be the family legacy.

But what inspiration remains in a Republican caucus that cares first and foremost about championing guns and decrying vaccinations? What binds anyone to the fraternity where Brian Boquist is the sergeant-at-arms?

What’s worth celebrating in the snickers out of Idaho?

-- Steve Duin

stephen.b.duin@gmail.com