OPINION: Disaffected Rs, this one's for you

In last week’s column, I described three disastrous Republican-caused problems. Carrying guns in schools sets the stage for mayhem, abortion restrictions dramatically increase maternal/child morbidity, and staying silent on bullying in schools leads to mental health disasters. 

During this legislative session, Idaho’s Republican legislators have made very clear where they stand by voting on bills that address all three of these issues. As I said last week, these Republican stances make it clear that the GOP is not really the pro-life party. These recent pieces of legislation in Idaho should lead Republican voters to reconsider their loyalty to the GOP.

Fortunately, some of them are.

One such Republican recently sent me an email message that was also sent to many across North Idaho. 

The email contained an attachment warning Americans against the problems that would accompany a second Trump presidency. 

The take home message was that we all should  “wake up” to the threat to our democracy and to civil society.

I don’t know who else might have received this email. But with all due respect to my friend, I’m not the one who needs to read it the most. I and other Democrats have very much “woken” up to the dangers of fascist politics. 

It’s now time for Republicans to look closely at their own party’s deceptive tactics, its misguided policies and its dangerous plans. 

No one should be deceived or distracted by the manufactured “border crisis.” Republicans just last week walked away from the most conservative and bipartisan border legislation we’ve seen in years. They dumped their chance to fix the perennial immigration problem because Trump wanted to use the “border crisis” to further deceive and distract voters in his campaign for the White House.

Similarly, no one should forget that Trump appointees to the courts robbed women of their reproductive rights. The same judges can be counted on to hobble or even dismantle the federal agencies that protect us from bad pharmaceuticals, unscrupulous businesses and environmental pollution. 

Keep in mind that Trump and his followers in Congress plan to privatize or end Social Security and Medicare, abandon our European allies, and purge the federal workforce of anyone who does not toe their line.

Furthermore, do not lose sight of the ugly un-American ways that Trump and his supporters mobilize their supporters. They denigrate and victimize already marginalized groups, like LGBTQ+ people, immigrants and racial minorities, that cannot fight back. 

And do not believe what they say about elections being “stolen,” or that mail-in ballots are insecure, or that party-run caucuses are an accurate measure of voter sentiment. 

Well-informed citizens, whether Republican, Democratic or otherwise, should not take anything the Republican officials say at face value.

As my friend’s email noted, R voters need to wake up. 

The time has come for more disaffected Republicans to abandon their sinking ship and become Democrats. They might be pleasantly surprised by what they find. 

We do not apply political purity tests or erect hurdles for citizens to jump before they can join us. We are a coalition party that listens with compassion and understanding to diverse views — including Republican perspectives. Sometimes we disagree, but we always find common ground. 

Sometimes diverse additions to our internal conversations even move us to the Right. To us, being centrist and collaborative isn’t the end of the world. 

What would happen if disaffected Republicans got involved with the Democrats? It is more than likely that we will find innumerable areas of agreement. Areas where we can work together to reclaim our county, our state and our nation while preserving the diversity that makes us great. 

That’s how we build a more perfect union.

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Evan Koch is chairman of the Kootenai County Democrats.