Longtime Republican now an outcast
What I have learned: It is often possible in politics that your friends are not your friends and your party has turned on you.
I have been a member of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC) for about 20 years. No one that I am aware of who is currently on the KCRCC has been there longer than I have and certainly not continuously. I cannot remember for sure but it was around 2001 or 2002 that I first became a member.
Now after an invasion of Ron Paulers, Constitutionalists, Libertarians and finally Brent Regan sycophants into the local Republican Party, I may be involuntarily on my way out.
Once again as so many times in the past I registered as a candidate for my precinct but this time, unlike before, my precinct boundaries had been changed and I had been deprived of my longtime faithful voters.
Up until now my precinct boundaries had survived essentially unchanged. Whether the change was contrived or a natural result of blind justice, it is hard to say. There are arguments on both sides.
The clerk's office says it was all totally righteous but how does one know that or even investigate such a thing? I am told that one guy created all the maps. It is alleged that he was oblivious to political results. Apparently redrawing the precinct maps was such a hot potato that no one who was elected or ever planning to be elected wanted the responsibility. What had in the past been simple had become complicated.
Ever since Democrats decided to lynch my great-great-grandfather and even before that event, my family has been staunch Republicans. Now, however, danger comes not from just Democrats but from within the Republican Party itself. Brent Regan is a present-day representation of the Great Svengali who controls committees that decide who will and will not be allowed to be Republican candidates.
Several times candidates have been selected to run against me. Each time they have failed. This time a person the committee had previously chosen to run for Hayden City Council and who lost to a non-approved Republican has decided to run against me. Who will win is not clear.
All that can be said is that time will tell. Until then I will probably be subjected to more security checks at events and treated as a nonentity that no one knows within my own party. I have no right to anyone’s votes and certainly not unearned votes, but as in the Bible it appears that there arose a pharaoh who knew not Joseph.
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Duane Rasmussen is a Hayden resident and attorney.
