MY TURN: Republican Enough

If you’re a Republican, you’ve surely noticed the growing rift in our local politics between traditional conservatives and a new conservative faction that is so far to the right it openly embraces the John Birch Society. I’ll note for newcomers to the area that two years ago our own Kootenai County Republican Central Committee voted to adopt the values and beliefs of the John Birch Society as their own. There was no dissent; the vote was unanimous.

Traditional conservatives, many of whom were Republicans before the insurgents were born, are derided as “RINOs” and encouraged to leave the Party if they don’t like the new direction. All of this raises some important questions: What exactly is an Idaho Republican these days? Are the rest of us “republican” enough for these folks, or are we RINOs too?

If anyone should know what a Republican is, it is Brent Regan. He is chair of the KCRCC as well as the Idaho Freedom Foundation. In his regular, CdA Press column from June 23rd of this year, Regan said, it’s simple: “The [Idaho] Republican Party Platform is the ONLY defining standard for what it means to be a Republican” (emphasis his). It also happens to be the standard by which all Idaho Republican electoral candidates are measured. And measured they are.

The IFF and KCRCC actually score how a candidate’s views and voting record align with the state Platform. The KCRCC subjects local candidates to their “rating and vetting” process. A top ranking from the committee wins the candidate a coveted KCRCC recommendation, which almost always translates to an election victory around here.

“KCRCC's mission is now what it always should have been, to effectuate as public policy the ideals articulated in the [Idaho] Republican Platform,” Brent Regan, CdA Press, 8/11/21.

But what are those ideals? Below are five of the planks in the official Idaho GOP Platform that Regan, the KCRCC, and their recommended elected officials (including our U.S. Senate and House candidates) tacitly agree to institute if given the chance.

· Article I, Section 4-A of the Platform abolishes the Federal Reserve, returning the U.S. to the gold standard. Presently, no country on Earth still uses the gold standard because it shackles an economy’s money supply to the amount of gold in circulation. This, in turn, limits growth and takes away effective, time-tested tools governments use to respond to economic downturns. Consider that China is the world’s largest gold producer and would thus have an outsized influence on how the U.S. economy performs.

· Article I, Section 2-I of the of the Idaho GOP Platform repeals the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thereby abolishing the Federal income tax. I hate taxes too, but is it sensible to go back to the tariff system that was in use before 1913? Can tariffs generate enough money to fund our 21st century military, interstate highway system, air traffic control network, and so on? The resulting trade war would be ruinous.

· Article I, Section 3-C of the Platform eliminates the popular vote when electing Idaho’s U.S. senators?! Believe it or not, your senatorial voting rights would be transferred to state legislators down in Boise who, I assume, are more reliably controlled by party leaders than are the grassroots. The Platform states that the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be repealed to make this possible.

· Article XVI, Section 1-G makes machine guns legal again, as they were in the days of Al Capone. Uzi anyone?

· Article XIV, Section 3-A states that “abortion is murder from the moment of fertilization. All children should be protected regardless of the circumstances of conception, including persons conceived in rape and incest.” Section 3-D summarizes their intention in four simple words: “We oppose ALL abortion” (emphasis mine). As Rush used to say, “Words means things, folks.” This language makes clear that no pregnancy could be terminated in Idaho, not even those conceived in rape, incest, or to protect the mother’s life. Infertility treatments, such as in vitro fertilization, would also be in jeopardy.

For context, none of this language is found in the Republican National Committee’s platform. Nor is it found in the GOP platforms of Utah and Wyoming, our two most conservative neighboring states. Clearly, Idaho’s Republicans are much more radical than their conservative peers.

So, as the KCRCC flyers arrive in your mailbox this election season, remember that they do not base their candidate recommendations primarily on qualifications for office. Their recommendation simply certifies that their candidate is the most ideologically extreme of all those on the ballot.

The hard-right shift in our politics is a predictable, if perhaps unintentional, consequence of the rating-and-vetting scheme used by the KCRCC. Any system that pits Republican candidates against one another in a race-for-the-bottom competition of doctrinal purity will quickly become nothing more than an extremist-delivery system. And this it has become.

I think we need to start rating and vetting the KCRCC itself. Recent winners of KCRCC recommendations include the three NIC trustees who seem hell-bent on bringing down our treasured community college; the new county assessor whose pay was cut in half by county commissioners angered by his incompetence; and our new county library board majority who, in just a few months, has managed to cut many popular community programs, threated to close the libraries on their religion’s Sabbath, and caused its insurers to raise the libraries’ rates due to the board’s erratic behavior. A verse from Matthew (7:16) comes to mind: “By their fruits you shall know them. . . .”

 Doug Harro is a resident of Coeur d'Alene.