OPINION: Uniform Fairness

Imagine your child plays on their school’s Little League baseball team. You bought them their uniform and glove. You take them to practice. You attend all their games and encourage and support them in every way a parent should. You set a fine example for other parents who are also dedicated and put in the effort to support the team. As a result of all this hard work your school’s team is the state champion. You are justifiably proud of your child, your team and your school. 

At the other school in town there is also a Little League team but most of the parents don’t put in the time and effort. They will drop their child off at practice and pick them up later but they will rarely attend a game or show any real interest. These parents look at your team with envy. They are jealous of your team’s success and believe they have been “cheated” out of being the champions. 

Instead of putting in the time and effort to make their team competitive they decide it is unfair that their kids don’t win. They believe all kids should win all the time and if some kids don’t win it’s only because the other kids have an unfair advantage. The losers put a plan in motion.

At the next game the losers show up with their kids in your team’s uniforms and they try to have their kids play on your team. You are justifiably upset and complain to the umpire who tells the losers to go put on their own uniforms if they want to play. 

This enrages the losers who scream at the umpire and call your team a bunch of extremists who don’t want to play fair. You are confused and perplexed. Why don’t they spend their effort and time practicing to be better players? Why are they intent on dragging your kids down rather than raising their kids up?

At the next city council meeting the losers show up demanding the council take action against inequality. They say uniforms are unfair to students, especially students who don’t want to play on a team. They demand uniforms and teams be banned and that all games must be “open.” They insist that any student can claim to be a member of any team even if they don’t go to that school. The protesters chant “Stop Hitler! Open Games! Stop Hitler! Open Games!” 

The city council reluctantly passes an ordinance that outlaws uniforms, allows any student to play on any team and scoring will be determined by a computer program which ranks each player based on equity, inclusion and environmental awareness. 

The next baseball season was an unmitigated disaster. Fights broke out at every practice. Not only did the town not have a state champion, they forfeited the first game of the playoffs because not enough players showed up. The No Uniform ordinance was quietly repealed but the town never fully recovered. 

It is no secret that if you are running for elected office in Idaho you have a much better chance of winning if you are a Republican rather than a Democrat. Losers will claim that Republicans have some kind of unfair advantage because Republicans won’t allow people who are not affiliated Republican to vote in the Republican primary. 

The reality is simple. The existing Republican Primary produces Republican nominees for the general election that most voters find more attractive than the Democratic nominee. If the Democrats would nominate candidates that people want to vote for, then the Democrats would likely do better in elections. This isn’t rocket surgery. Put up a candidate the voters like more than the opposition and your candidate will likely get more votes. 

“Open Primaries” is the lie hiding the Uniparty Initiative. 

The progressive Democrats behind the “open primary” Uniparty Initiative want to eliminate political parties and institute Ranked Choice Voting. They make an “open primary” emotional appeal that ignores the fact that “open primaries” are illegal in Idaho. Instead they point to the unaffiliated voters saying that unaffiliated voters are “denied a vote” for the Republican nominee. News Flash: Unaffiliated voters don’t want to vote in the Republican primary. If they did, all they have to do is affiliate with the Republican Party. Democrats and their supporters are trying to deceive you and are hoping you are gullible enough to swallow the lie they are selling. 

Democrats see nothing wrong with temporarily affiliating as Republican so they can vote in the Republican primary. They even boast about it. Comically, during the last election cycle the Democrat Mayor of Sandpoint was disqualified from his run for governor because he forgot he was affiliated as a Republican. Oops.

However, when some Republicans decided to turn the tables and run as Democrat Precinct Committeemen you would have thought it was the end of the world. Democrats cried “infiltration” and “fraud” and stories ran statewide about how evil the Republicans were for pretending to be Democrats. 

Everyone agrees that only Democrats should vote for Democrat Precinct Committeemen and that only Democrats should vote for Democrat Party officials and that only Democrats should vote for who represents the Idaho Democratic party at the National Democratic Convention. 

But Democrats believe anybody should be able to vote for who represents the Republican Party in the general election. Since they can’t legally make this happen they are trying to force the radically extreme approach of eliminating all political parties in the primary and general elections and implement Ranked Choice Voting. Their scheme also includes a provision legalizing lying. Under the Uniparty Initiative, any candidate can claim to be affiliated with any party even if they are not. Under the proposed law the chairman of the Democratic Party could run for state office and legally put an “R” for Republican next to their name on the ballot to fool you.

The Uniparty “open primary” Initiative isn’t about fairness, it’s about winning, and there is one thing that we have ample evidence of; Democrats, and their supporters, will use any means necessary to win.

It’s just common sense.

Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.