Early this week I posted a diary describing Idaho Democrat's quandary- I had to declare as a Republican to do my part in voting against the Republican extremists who have taken over Bonneville County's Republican Central Committee, and were attempting to get their delegates elected for the upcoming convention.
Bonneville County is so solidly Republican that all of the county seats up for election offered only the choice between one Repub and another Repub. Half of the candidates were extremists.
Idaho has slid increasingly far right in the past two elections, and have attempted to pass some radical legislation, much similar to Arizona's, that most Idahoans have not agreed with. While the state is overwhelmingly Republican, I have always believed most were moderately conservative.
We are all Republicans Part II described how BCRCC's efforts to get their people elected was defeated. Only one won a State district race by a narrow margin. As I hoped, the moderate push-back was successful.
There was more news this morning...
As part of the primary, Republican delegates were also up for election. Most of the candidates had opposition.
Much of the extremist strategy planned to drive moderates out of the state and county offices is to gain a majority of delegates who will vote their way in the state and national conventions. They planned to use delegate votes to subvert the populace's votes. This is the same strategy the Ron Paul supporters hope to use in their national convention.
The extremist Bonneville county RCC 'coded' the campaign signage of the delegates they wanted to go to the convention. The extremists all had a distinctive yellow stripe running across the signs, with the words 'Conservative Republican' below the stripe. The candidate's name was in the yellow stripe.
Unbeknownst to me, the moderate faction of Bonneville county's Republicans made a list of those candidates and went to work on them with phone calls, email, etc. which exposed their far-right stances before the election.
The delegate winners were announced in this morning's Post-Register. All of the RCC's delegates lost except for one, who won over an old lady who has been a Repub activist for years and is now confined to a wheelchair. This delegate may have won simply because the old gal was simply too old, and her time was up.
As a result of this broad failure, it looks like Don Shanze, the Chairman of the RCC, will lose his seat. Several of his most loyal sub-Chairpersons lost their seats as delegates when they were voted out Tuesday, especially to of the most rabid extremists who were the main talking heads for the committee.
This is more good news for Bonneville County Democrats. It appears that a lot of the independents, who are not declared for any party, have finally had enough. They are beginning to swing toward the center, and that's where we Democrats are here.
Since this is a state with a small population, name recognition plays as large a part in elections as does party affiliation. Our elected Democrats are all folks who are well known in their communities, and most have been civically active in their towns and rural communities.
For us, it is harder to fight the far-right element here than it is to fight the moderates. Republican moderates here often swing to the far right if they feel they are going to be on the losing side of an issue, but our Democrats do not. We hold firm to our beliefs because there is nothing to lose by doing so, and everything to gain.
Traditionally, Idaho has always worked best when we have a Governor of one party and a Legislation with a narrow majority, or a strong minority, of the other party. There are really very few liberals here; our 'liberals' would be moderates to conservatives in other states.
More than anything, Idaho Democrats are practical. They seek working solutions to our problems and leave the philosophical disagreements up to the Republicans, where the differences are stark and very often radical. Idaho likes to indulge in radicalism once in a while, and there is a Libertarian streak in all of us, but when it gets to extreme, common sense usually prevails.
The last 6 years have seen a lot of very radical right legislation passed. Idaho was the first state to challenge the Health Care Reform law, and many more extreme bills were blocked by a few Republican and Democratic moderates in committee during this time.
It is beginning to look like the radical right agenda here is beginning to crumble once more. I hope it continues. But, as always, we will face it again, sometime in the future. Hopefully, when the worst rises again, Idaho will have a lot of tough Democrats in office to block it before it takes over.