MY TURN: Seeing through an elephant tale
How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. With this fact in mind, let’s start consuming the elephant Brent Regan placed before us so as to expose the tripe buried in his story titled “Elephant Metamorphosis.”
Once again Regan brings us entertainment in another of his projection-filled fantasies. His self-soothing stories regarding what Idaho Republicans value and think, appeal only to those who faithfully worship him and perhaps those who are oblivious to the facts. Plenty of Republicans vehemently disagree with Regan’s tyrannical ideology. Case in point, consider the statewide primary election results. Those candidates he supported, except for one, didn’t win their races.
Regan likes tossing numbers around, so let’s give him some mathematical facts to digest. Approximately 430 who voted at the Republican state convention last month in a manner that pleases him, in reality, is not a “landslide.” Dorothy Moon received about 61% of the vote total, not the result of an overwhelming margin representing the “will” of the Idaho Republicans. To further trump fiction with fact, there are approximately 500,000 registered Republican voters in Idaho, so 430 out of a half-million voters is far from a landslide, rather it equates to a tiny .00086% of Idaho’s Republican voters.
Furthermore, we need to rightly consider how a large number of Republicans in Kootenai County are excluded from being considered as delegates by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee. Because these Republicans hold principle-based values, they are shunned and labeled as the “enemy.” Rather instead, the KCRCC voted in favor of individuals with a history of bigoted and dishonest behavior - the same people who were booted out of the Idaho Young Republicans because of their harmful and unprincipled behavior. In fact, the practice to ensure complete cultural adhesion on the KCRCC is so ingrained that those precinct committee officers who are not drawn to be part of the gang mentality on the committee are even prevented from holding sub-committee assignments.
These practices, of course, guarantee the representation Kootenai County Republicans present at the convention from Regan’s radicalized committee is very restrictive and limited in thought and objective. Other counties across Idaho are being trained by KCRCC members in these same unethical tactics in order to guarantee the most radicalized candidates are selected for office both for county and statewide positions.
Those who Regan insults and criticizes do not deserve his persecuting attacks. His attacks on them are mere projections. Those he targets are comprehensively invested in the well-being of our community. They, and their families are the people who have made Kootenai County a great place to live, to work and to raise a family. They are thoughtful, civil, principled individuals. Their roots run deep in our community. Rather these citizens deserve praise and recognition for their selfless community-focused efforts.
On the other hand, those whom he defends, and who flock to him for recognition, are like lost souls seeking acceptance, eager to act out required gang-type initiations for Regan’s approval. Anybody astute and paying attention to government activities locally can identify this behavior at government meetings. These folks regularly parade up to the podium to air their grievances with little to no decorum, respect or civility. Most of these people lack deep roots in our community and are easy prey for conspiratorial manipulation.
For those hoping to get elected, Regan provides favor, largely through campaign donations and introductions to the “right” people, so they flock to him like flies to candy. The dynamics of these relationships have provided many troubled and problematic elected officials. The motives, the character, and the competence of these people need to be heavily scrutinized, yet Regan and his KCRCC fail miserably in this effort.
In a recent editorial by Trent Clark in the Idaho State Journal, Clark wrote that at the Republican state convention in July, a delegate said, “We are here for war.” Clark also wrote, “Regan summarized, ‘It is not enough to defeat our enemies, we must crush them!’"
Are you on Regan’s “crush” list? If you are a principled individual who lives by the standard code of civil engagement, there’s a good chance you are on his list of “enemies.”
What has come from Regan and his faithful followers is an effort to create a dangerous normalization of the radicalization of our state and local governments.
If there is hope for us to live in a civil society where all are free to exercise freedom and enjoy liberty as provided to us in our constitutions, we must then denounce as a community of wise people what is being bred in Brent Regan’s mind and the minds of his followers.
Madness will bring forth suffering. It’s just common sense.
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Deborah Rose is a former Kootenai County Republican precinct committee officer and a resident of Kootenai County.