Tight grip on state sovereignty Lincoln Day Dinner

COEUR d'ALENE - "I want to take a poll," began Cornel Rasor, Bonner County commissioner, speaking to a crowd sipping wine and beer in a Coeur d'Alene Resort ballroom. "How many people here have heard of the Second Amendment?"

A forest of hands shot into the air.

Rasor smiled.

"I thought so," he said. "Now, how many of you think it's a good idea?"

Raucous applause filled the room.

The queries were a fitting kick-off to the Lincoln Day Dinner on Friday evening, where states' rights and self protection were chief themes.

Roughly 350 attended the lavish event, the anticipated annual fundraiser for the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.

With guns on display for a raffle, local pachyderms gathered to rub elbows with elected conservatives, including precinct committeemen, as well as county, state and federal officials.

"There needs to be more unity," said Coeur d'Alene Republican Lenora Reese, of what she hopes local Republicans will achieve with the funds raised. "They need to stop fighting personal battles, and battle for the general good."

The fundraiser was also a chance for Republicans to hear what their elected officials were up to, as several took the stage to discuss current issues.

True to Gem State culture, speeches of the evening included lively odes to anti-federalism.

Rasor, recapping reasons for the Second Amendment's creation, touted the importance of American's freedom to form militias and take up arms against tyranny.

"The freedom by which all other freedoms is secured is the Second Amendment," Rasor said.

He noted that the Founding Fathers assigned state legislatures responsibility to battle an overpowering central government.

That's a responsibility states should be pursuing today, he added.

"States are separate and independent sovereigns. Sometimes they have to act like it," Rasor said, garnering lengthy applause.

Idaho U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo bemoaned the $16.5 trillion national debt.

The debt has ballooned another $6.5 trillion under President Obama's watch, he noted.

The key to a balanced budget is a reformed tax code, Crapo contended, and a pro-growth agenda.

"We can't sustain it," Crapo said of the country operating with such a fiscal burden. "We must take action."

Jim Risch accepted applause for his recognition by the National Journal as the country's most conservative senator.

"It's easy to be," the congressman said, speaking in front of a sign calling for his re-election. "I'm representing all of you."

Risch dubbed U.S. government spending as out of control. He derided his Democratic counterparts for resisting spending cuts.

"As bad as you think the financial situation is, it's substantially worse than that," Risch said.

Taxing the rich is "class warfare," he added, not a solution.

"It's time for the other side to compromise with us," he said. "We need to spend less every year."

Joking that states might rise up against implementing health care exchanges, Idaho's First District Congressman Raul Labrador described witnessing Sen. Rand Paul's recent filibuster.

The Kentucky senator spoke nearly 13 hours straight on Wednesday to challenge the administration's drone program.

"What was amazing was one man was standing on principle, and young people across the country were listening to a man ramble on for 12 hours," Labrador said. "I got to stand there for two hours with Rand Paul on the Senate floor. I was touched and inspired."

Lawerence Denney, former Idaho speaker of the House, apologized to younger generations for how the government has brought the country to the brink of fiscal collapse, with "weakening national defense" and "the federal government assuming more and more power."

He complained that states have relinquished too much sovereignty to the federal government.

"Sometimes here in the states, we feel like colonies," Denney said. "We feel like there is a tyrannical federal government dictating to us what we can and cannot do."

It's time for the states to push back, Denney said, reflecting on the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act.

"Is there hope? I believe there is," he said.