KCRCC: How far will they go?

I must confess that I generally do not pay a great deal of attention to flyers put on my front door, but recently I received one that caught my attention. It appeared to be authorized by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee and was a sample ballot of KCRCC recommended “conservative candidates” running in various local and state primary elections on May 17.

I went to the referenced website and reviewed KCRCC’s self-described “new vetting and rating program” for each candidate and while finding at least some of the positions taken by many of the candidates to be just to the right of Attila the Hun, I must confess that as a lifelong Republican and Vietnam combat Marine, I shared at least some of the views on some of the issues espoused by many of the candidates.

I guess what bothered me about the KCRCC “flyer” was not so much the vetting process of their recommended candidates, but the unanswered question of who vetted the KCRCC?

Who are the individuals, acting under the banner of the KCRCC, who are recommending that I vote for these specific candidates and why do they think that I am unable to make my own informed decisions about who I want representing me?

Is this the same KCRCC that arguably contributed to turning North Idaho College, a vibrant and very important part of the local community, into an institution on life support? Did the KCRCC play any role in the wrongful termination of the NIC president at a settlement cost of $500,000?

Did the KCRCC create and/or participate in a “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” plot to infiltrate the local Democratic Party by trying to run KCRCC members as Democrats in the upcoming local elections?

Why has the state Republican Party apparently disavowed any connection with the KCRCC?

These are questions that at the very least deserve a public airing and depending on the answers, maybe we need to consider how far the KCRCC is willing to go to ensure that we all walk in lockstep, like lemmings right off the political cliff on May 17.

TOM NOTESTINE

Post Falls