OPINION: The new Republican Party

Kootenai County is the home of the most successful, respected and emulated Republican Central Committee in Idaho, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee or KCRCC. The mission of the KCRCC is to enhance freedom and prosperity by promoting fiscally and socially conservative candidates who will implement the Idaho Republican Party Platform as policy.

Republican voters were weary of having candidates who called themselves “conservative” to get elected only to find out that they were more closely aligned with liberal Democrat policies. Republican voters demanded that the Republican Party “do something” about these Republican In Name Only (RINO) candidates. In response, over the past three years the KCRCC has developed a system for evaluating candidates with the goal of finding those that best align with the principles articulated in the Republican Platform. The KCRCC invests hundreds of man hours every election recruiting, vetting, evaluating and ultimately rating the available candidates in order to make a recommendation to the voters. 

This process involves all the members of the KCRCC; Precinct Committeemen who are elected by the Republican voters in each of the 73 precincts in Kootenai County. The KCRCC vetting and rating process also serves as a model for other counties across the state, and even some in other states, to emulate so that they too can better inform the voters. Ada, Canyon, Bonneville and Bonner counties, among others, all have begun evaluating candidates to help enlighten the voters. 

Stealth liberal RINO politicians have been calling themselves “Conservative Republicans” for years and getting away with it. How? Because the average Republican voter is far too busy working and paying taxes to investigate every candidate, listen to their campaign speeches, review their record or attend multiple speaking engagements and town halls. Fortunately the KCRCC has stepped up to help with the heavy lifting. 

Liberal politicians much preferred the sleepy old Republican Party. A party that would hibernate until after the primary and then be pamphleteers for whoever won regardless of if they were a bona-fide Republican. The old Republican Party was easy to fool because it didn’t pay much attention.

The New Republican Party is another matter altogether. The liberal politicians see populism and the scrutiny from the KCRCC, and others, as an existential threat to their power. They are correct. 

At first you would think that these RINOs would respond by actually moving closer to the thing they claim to be, becoming more conservative in their governance. In reality the opposite happens. When threatened they go to ground and align with those they are most comfortable, the Democrats. We are seeing this in real time in Boise with the RINOs and Democrats working together against the conservatives. Is that what you voted for?

Any political science student trained in Alinsky’s Marxist Rules for Radicals knows that if you can’t win on the issues, attack the man, or in this case the committee. So attack they do on an almost daily basis. You never see facts, just word salad jargon and conspiracy theories designed to elicit an emotional response. They play you for dummies and use terms like extremist, racist, cult, Nazi and make a priori absurd statements such as: claiming that by expressing our opinion the KCRCC is limiting your right to vote; or that the KCRCC is taking over the county; or that the KCRCC is on a mission to destroy everything. 

In a recent OpEd, a local liberal activist and Biden supporter claimed that you are paying “KCRCC’s bills” and that everything bad that happens is KCRCC’s fault. They claimed that a clerical error by a staff member in the Assessor’s office happened because of the KCRCC…right… and that KCRCC’s rating is responsible for the troubles at NIC, but Mike Waggoner is the only board member that went through the rating process, and he was unanimously elected chairman. 

KCRCC did not bring the expensive NIC lawsuits or threaten accreditation or attempt to overturn the results of an election. It wasn’t KCRCC recommended candidates who spent over two million taxpayer dollars buying an overpriced bar and a house. It wasn’t KCRCC members who disrupted meetings, intimidated and assaulted board members or pulled fire alarms. One of Alinsky’s “rules” is to cause confusion by accusing others of the crimes you commit. 

But if these crazy claims are true then everything good that happens must be KCRCC’s fault too. On balance, how are we doing?

KCRCC volunteers stepped up and are conducting the Presidential Preference Caucus at no cost to the voter, saving Kootenai County over a quarter of a million dollars.

It is two KCRCC recommended candidates, Jeff Tyler and David Russell on the Post Falls Highway District that have reduced the budget by 1% each year for three years with no reduction in services, something no other district has done in the entire state.

It was KCRCC recommended candidates on the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization (KMPO) that lead and won the fight to stop the invasive Traffic Management Center with its estimated cost of at least half a million dollars a year.

It was the 12 KCRCC recommended state legislators who were instrumental in overriding the governor’s veto of the property tax relief bill during the last legislative session. 

It was KCRCC recommended candidates on the Library Board that fought to move materials harmful to minors out of the minor’s section and into the adult section of our libraries, protecting the innocence of our children. 

The KCRCC recommended Clerk runs the best, most accurate elections departments in the state.

Of the 2,040 medical examiner offices in the U.S., the KCRCC recommended coroner is one of only 45 to receive accreditation from the International Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners (IACME). Accreditation allows the coroner’s office to apply for grants to improve our facilities which would otherwise not be available allowing those improvements without encumbering the citizens of Kootenai County with significant tax burdens.

KCRCC recommended candidates are chosen by the voters 8 out of 10 times because a rational and fair minded evaluation shows they are doing a tremendous and positive service for the citizens of Kootenai County. Your choice is to vote for the KCRCC recommended candidate or vote for the loser. 

It’s just common sense.

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Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.