A happy ending after all

Things rarely turn out to be as bad as we fear - or as good as we hope.

Tuesday's election was a perfect reminder of the former.

By closing the voting on the Republican side to only registered members of the party, GOP officials had set the stage, intentionally or otherwise, for a narrow segment of the state's most conservative candidates to prevail. Idaho's big bloc of independent voters was left with three choices: Vote Democrat, which featured very few contested races; declare for the Republican Party and have a real say in the primary election's outcome but forfeit your political privacy; or stay home.

Because we're in the middle of the forest, so to speak, it's easy to lose perspective about Idahoans as a group. U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador expressed it well when he said recently that his time in Washington, D.C., has helped him realize that most of Idaho's Democrats would be Republicans in our nation's capital. Idahoans are independent, liberty-loving cusses, after all, and more conservative than most if not all other red states. But thankfully, we're also not blinded by the glaring bright lights of partisanship.

That's why the strong push for elected office from those who would tend to isolate rather than unite, who would bear banners of ideology rather than badges of service, motivated enough conscientious voters to step forward and be counted. Locally, that spelled defeat for Phil Hart, whose anti-federalist zeal made him a hero to some and a hypocrite to many. And sure enough, most of the candidates who look up to Hart were looking down when the voting was over.

This newspaper's editorial board has encouraged Republican Party leadership to go back to the way they used to embrace the electorate: Offer an open primary which allows voters of all persuasions to participate, even if it means some sabotage on a minute scale might be attempted. But despite low voter turnout statewide, Tuesday's results show that under any system, extremists will have a fight on their hands. Even the most radical changing of the rules failed to silence Idaho's powerful independent voice.