While a lot of attention has been focused on the Jan 6 insurrection investigation(s), it looks like some of the GOP extremists at State level are itching to get their own local sedition on.
While Idaho Gov. Brad Little was cosplaying down on the Texas/Mexico border with a number of other R govs, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin decided she was now the Governor in his absence and tried to deploy Idaho National Guard troops to the Mexican border. The Idaho Guard’s commanding general declined the order. She issued an order blocking vaccine mandates — which the real governor repealed the next day — from Texas.
Now the less insane Republicans are appealing to Independents and Democrats to register as Republicans to defeat the more insane Rs in the May primary. They’re worried that the hard(er)-right drift will scuttle efforts to grow the economy. (They are certainly doing a good job screwing up health care in Eastern WA by shipping their COVID patients over the border because their hospital systems are at the limit — as in no ICU or ventilator beds available and people lined up to get at them if they don’t die during the wait.)
The mainstream Republicans who have controlled the state for decades worry that if far-right Republicans like McGeachin gain control it will be bad for business. Their fear is Idaho will be unable to attract high-paying tech jobs and that highly-skilled workers looking to flee pricey West Coast cities won’t move to the state if it’s run by extremists.
Do tell. What were you supposedly sane Republicans doing while your party went feral?
ETA — close a parenthesis in third paragraph