Op-Ed: KCRCC benefits our community

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC) routinely draws the ire of many prominent North Idahoans. In this very paper, I regularly read that the group is extremist, that it introduces divisive partisan politics into local elections, and that they and their leader Brent Regan are up to something sinister.

How dare these KCRCC people review candidates for local offices?! Aren't these supposed to be "non-partisan" elections? Wasn’t it their fault that the president of North Idaho College was driven out, and two school board members resigned?

I ask, “Just who do they have to be?” Like me, they are principled Conservatives who are active citizens. They are engaged in the struggle to reorient government to play a more limited role in our lives.

The KCRCC are at the forefront of unseating the comfortable establishment leaders in our community, not because those leaders are villains, but because they practice a “go along to get along” ethos.

These reigning local leaders are the ones who allowed philosophies antithetical to traditional American values into our schools in the name of "equity." They enabled the ongoing expansion of government into our lives. As political moderates, these individuals see effective government policy as a force for good.

Conservatives such as the KCRCC understand that all government policy involves the application of the coercive power of the state upon us citizens. Conservatives believe that all government is, at its very best, a necessary evil. As Jefferson said, "That government that governs best governs least, because its people discipline themselves."

In a North Idaho with so many self-avowed Conservatives, I have long wondered why our local governments are so ideologically moderate or even progressive.

The answer is that, in "nonpartisan" elections, candidates whose values do not represent those held by the actual majority can get elected simply by making all races about personalities instead of values. Questions about a candidate's guiding ethos can then easily be evaded as being irrelevant.

However, political philosophy is crucial in understanding every controversy. Is a good-seeming proposal going to set a bad precedent? Do the benefits of new regulations outweigh the expansion of government that they entail? Pragmatism alone cannot distinguish between what is right and wrong; it only tells us what is convenient.

KCRCC helps all Conservatives by investigating and endorsing candidates based on their adherence to our shared Conservative values.

No active adult has the time necessary to research every relevant detail about all of our local candidates. KCRCC does us a service by making endorsements, which we voters can then consider in the privacy of our own minds. Our community is the better for the active citizenship and Conservative activism of the KCRCC.

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In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to high school students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com