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Because they have long held a supermajority and dominated Idaho politics, next months Republican primary elections are expected to be among the most competitive and influential races in a vital election year for Idaho.

Based on decades of political dominance in Idaho and Democrats not running candidates in most races, the May 17 Republican primary elections will answer the question of who controls the Republican Party and, therefore, sets the policy and political agenda for years to come.

With the closed primary, that has become basically the general election because Idaho is such a strong red state, said former Republican Speaker of the Idaho House Bruce Newcomb.

The 2022 elections are the most important elections in years. All 105 seats in the Idaho Legislature are up for election, and all statewide offices, including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state and superintendent of public instruction are up as well.

History and electoral dynamics are certainly on the Republicans side. Although the Idaho Senate was split 21-21 in 1991 and 1992, the Republicans have controlled a majority in the Idaho Legislature since 1959, with the exception of those two years.

Republicans have also won every statewide office since 2002, when Democrat Marilyn Howard was re-elected superintendent of public instruction.

And even before a single vote in the 2022 elections is counted, Republicans know they will continue to enjoy a supermajority in 2023. Of the 105 legislative seats up for election this year, there are no Democrats running for 60 of the seats.

For the 2022 elections, the goals are clear, Idaho Republican Party Chairman Tom Luna told the Idaho Capital Sun. Republicans want to retain every statewide office and expand their supermajority in the Legislature. Theyre also looking to expand their political empire beyond the Statehouse.

Most recently we have been involved with what traditionally have been nonpartisan offices to get more conservative voices at the school board and city and county level, Luna said. That is the nature of success, keep what we have and expand what we have.

Idaho Republicans face division with the party

Supermajorities have interesting and complicated effects on elections and politics, said Jaclyn Kettler, associate professor of political science at Boise State University.

Republicans holding such a large majority in the state, whether you look at all the statewide offices or a supermajority in Legislature, actually provide some challenges to both parties, Kettler said. Republicans have internal division and Democrats face a few struggles, and one is perhaps even being able to recruit candidates to run.

Luna said the primaries are when Republicans hammer out their differences and decide which direction the party will head.

As I travel around the state, its still very clear to me Republicans agree on 80% of policy and 80% of values, but it is during the primary we debate the 20% we dont agree on.

Its pretty clear we have legislative candidates that represent different wings of the party, Luna added. As a state party, we dont get involved with supporting candidates in the primary. We let the voters decide.

But Idaho Democratic Party chair Rep. Lauren Necochea, D-Boise, said division within the Republican Party isnt merely about debating policies about how to cut taxes and reduce government regulation. She said the Republican Party and the Idaho House have moved farther to the right and pushed divisive and extremism.

Idahoans in all walks of life are seeing extremism play out in the Idaho Legislature and are deeply concerned about the future of our state, Necochea said. Examples she gave included reducing funding for higher education and the library commission, GOP efforts to remove a statute that protects librarians from imprisonment, passing a Texas-style abortion law and the Republicans focus on so-called indoctriantion and critical race theory in school.

Did the closed Republican primary election push the party to the far right?

Newcomb, a Republican who held the Houses top leadership position from 1999 through 2006, said he is worried about how the closed Republican primary election, which is only open to voters affiliated with the Republican Party, politicizes the party.

The big thing is we have become much more partisan, particularly the Republican Party and factions in dissent within the party, Newcomb said. If you look at Take Back Idaho, which includes (former state Republican officials) Ben Ysursa, Jim Jones, myself and Bob Geddes, we are concerned about the state Legislature in terms of addressing policy rather than conspiracy theories. There are factions (in the GOP) where we have CRT, critical race theory and those people buying into those stuff. Basically, in the beginning, hardly anybody could define it and no matter how much you shoot at it, it just keeps rising up. Now it is present in a lot of peoples campaigns and it shouldnt be.

Since helping launch the Take Back Idaho PAC and saying he wants to push for the removal of extremists from the Legislature, Newcomb has been called a RINO, or Republican in Name Only.

Newcomb said the name-calling and meanness is illustrative of the partys shift and problems.

The other thing is campaigns have become so ugly and dissident that good people are reluctant to get involved.

Newcomb said Republicans deserve the blame for the division and extremism that has crept into the party and for underestimating the sophistication of divisive social media content.

A lot of it is people, like myself, were kind of asleep at the switch and thinking this will correct itself but it just keeps gaining momentum, Newcomb said.

Political scientist David Adler, the president of the nonprofit Alturas Institute in Idaho Falls, said the party has shifted so far to the right he doesnt see much distinction between Idaho Republicans, particularly in the Idaho House of Representatives. If there are differences, Adler said they should be measurable such as differences in voting records or by elected officials who stand up and denounce policies such as cutting funding for libraries and education or pursuing a bill that critics worried could lead to jailing libraries for material harmful to minors.

Adler points to two bills over the past two years that he says are illustrative of the state of the Republican Party in Idaho. One is this years abortion law, Senate Bill 1309. Every Republican but Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, voted for it and GOP Gov. Brad Little signed it into law. (Wood is retiring and will not return to the Idaho Legislature next year).

The other is the so-called anti indoctrination, anti critical race theory bill from 2021. The only Republican to vote against House Bill 377 was Sen. Dan Johnson, R-Lewiston.

Its one thing to say you represent a more moderate wing of the Republican Party and offer a distinctive voice than that offered by the far right, Adler said. But if in fact your voting record mirrors the far right, then essentially there is no moderate conservtive wing in the Republican Party.

Adler thinks the move to the right could eventually be damaging to the Idaho Republican Party, but it will take Idahoans deciding GOP policies dont work for regular Idaho families and launching a sustained move to attract independent and moderate voters to reshape the Democratic Party.

It would marginalize the far right in Idaho; it would place them on an island, Adler said.

For his part, Luna disagreed with Adler, Newcomb and Necochea.

We have a physiological difference on the proper role of government, Luna said. You have one side that really believes the answer is bigger government and more programs, right, more government programs. On the other side, Republicans insist on less government and know you need strong families. So everything we do should be building strong families, whatever your definition of families. We dont need big government where families are weak and not able to function as a unit and rely more and more on government programs. It is a different approach, where we want to strengthen families and strengthen the support system.

Luna said Republicans resisted extremism and anti-government activist Ammon Bundy, an independent candidate who originally announced he would run for governor as a Republican before going independent.

You saw that play out in its natural course, Luna said. He was not a Republican, he had never voted as a Republican and he realized he didnt have a place in the Republican Party and became the poster child of a RINO.

Luna said Republicans get criticized for their beliefs and infighting and but dont get enough credit for their accomplishments.

When I talk to the national press, I remind them we are the least regulated state and have one of the best economies in the country with two years in a row of massive tax cuts and rebates, Luna said. Its not an accident. Its the result of a robust and engaged Republican Party. When you write whats wrong with the Republican Party? or whats the future of the Republican Party? remind people it is that same Republican Party that created one of the fastest growing states, a state that is so attractive to others because of low regulations, reduced taxes and what I believe is a good education system for the money we spend.

The rest is here:
Primary elections 2022: State of the Idaho Republican Party - Bonner County Daily Bee

Dave Caudill| Opinion contributor

Phil Heimlich, I salute you.

Your famous father devised a maneuver to save people from choking on food while trying to swallow. You sir, are trying to save the Republican Party from choking as it maneuvers to swallow Donald Trump.

Heimlich is part of a far-too-rare cohort of the GOP. I hesitate to use the word "party"to describe what has become for so many in it a snarling, delusional cult with Trump ensconced as its chief snarler and truth denier.

Why cant more Republicans show the kind of integrity and willingness to compromise that Heimlich has consistently, going back to when Trump emerged on his fumbling quest to transform this country into an oligarchy led by one more rich would-be autocrat.

Lets try to understand what puts so many Republican officeholders in thrall to Trump. They, like a lot of politicians, put holding office and winning elections above almost all else. But as the news organization Axios Jonathan Swan put it to Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell in a recent interview: "Where is your moral red line?"

The unfailing truth is that Trump lost the 2020 election by some 7 million votes. Why back such a poor loser who cant even admit that he lost?

Many Republicans like to cite "problems" with vote counting in the 2020 elections. But this is clearly another political ploy made despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Elected officials, courts and law enforcement on both sides of the political spectrum examined the possibility of fraud in the election and found that if it happened at all, it could not have changed the outcome.

Warren Davidson, Heimlichs opponent in Ohios 8th District GOP primary, is among the Trump minions unwilling to admit that President Biden won the election. He almost surely knows that Biden won legitimately but calculates that its not politically expedient to say so. Hes the very definition of a politician without backbone.

But, of course, Davidson is not alone. Such a position has become the litmus test for a Trump endorsement, and Davidson has that. Presumably, it helps him to sleep at night.

Fortunately, Heimlich is not alone either. Republicans for the Rule of Law (ruleoflawrepublicans.com) is among the organizations working to restore the partys integrity.

Sarah Longwell, the groups executive director and publisher of The Bulwark (thebulwark.com), a news network that provides political reporting and analysis "free from the constraints of partisan loyalties,"attempted to explain the power of the "Big Lie"that Trump won the 2020 election. Longwell speaks often to focus groups and has concluded that people who believe the Big Lie dont believe its a lie. They are not bad people, shes concluded, they simply have no idea that they are being lied to.

A huge part of the reason they have no idea, Longwell writes, is that the news sources they pay attention to (heres looking at you, Fox) and candidates and public officials they voted for are going along with it. The officials do it to prop up their approval ratings, and Fox does it mostly to bolster its viewership. Consequently, the lie perpetuates itself.

Heimlich, and a lot of other Republicans, even those who wont say so, see through this Wizard-of-Oz-like curtain.

In a recent Enquirer news story, Hamilton County GOP Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou said of Heimlichs run against Davidson: "If he thinks hes rescuing us from Donald Trump, hes mistaken. Thats not how it works."

Mr. Triantafilou, how does it work? How does the Republican Party find more candidates who have crawled out from under the anti-democratic, mendacious, bloated boulder that is Donald Trump?

Dave Caudill of Mount Lookout is a freelance writer and editor and a former Enquirer staffer.

Read more:
Opinion: Heimlich working to restore Republican Party's integrity - The Cincinnati Enquirer

Leonard Pitts Jr.| Austin American-Statesman

Heres what were not going to do here.

We are not going to indulge the lazy rationalizations, false equivalence, cheap gaslighting and other forms of rhetorical chicanery that have become so common to political discourse in this era. Our country is in crisis, and we owe it better.

The warning is for those who claimed offense at the following observation, made in this space a few days back: What Americans have lost to be painfully accurate, what Republicans have trashed in pursuit of power is the willingness and ability to share a common national identity. It would seem to be self-evident truth. But not everyone agrees.

Constantly blaming Republicans, griped one respondent.

You ONLY blame the Republicans, complained another.

You exclusively blame Republicans, grumbled yet another.

Well, theres a reason the Republicans get the blame for destroying any sense of common American narrative. Its because pay close attention here they deserve the blame for destroying any sense of common American narrative.

Sorry, but Hunter Bidens laptop didnt do that. Black Lives Matter didnt do that. Whatever thing Fox News last told its audience to fear did not do that.

The Republican Party did it by a campaign of demonizing dissent, shredding norms and boundaries, embracing a politics of white resentment and fear and, perhaps most corrosively, delegitimizing the very idea of knowable fact, so that an ordinary birth certificate becomes an object of suspicion, an ordinary election a seedbed of distrust and the sacking of the U.S. Capitol an innocent visit by tourists.

Is it mere partisanship to hold the party accountable for this? Or are we not talking about something bigger and more foundational than political gamesmanship? Note how many of the GOPs ardent defenders George F. Will, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Kathleen Parker, Rep. Liz Cheney, Sen. Mitt Romney, Jonah Goldberg have become, to various degrees, estranged from it in recent years. None of those worthies may be credibly accused of being anti-Republican.

But what they are is conscientious enough that they cannot deny self-evident truth when it is right before them. Some of us prefer to peddle misguided both-sideism, to spew non-responsive non-sequiturs or stick metaphorical fingers in metaphorical ears going la la la la la la la until the truth safely passes them by.

Meantime, one party steers the ship of state toward jagged rocks.

Political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein once observed that, The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

They wrote that in a 2012 book called Its Even Worse Than It Looks. Ten years later, its even worse than that.

Its important to be clear on that, not to blame the GOP but because James Baldwin was right. You cannot fix what you will not face. And what America needs to face is the simple, chilling fact that the Republican Party is a clear and present danger.

Confronting that does not make you a partisan.

It makes you a patriot.

Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald.

Originally posted here:
Pitts: The Republican Party is a clear and present danger - Austin American-Statesman

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Go here to read the rest:
Lt. Col. (Ret) Alexander Vindman: Donald Trump and the Republican Party share this burden of this war - MSNBC

If you dont believe the Republicans can blow their chances of winning majorities in the House and Senate midterms this year, then you have not paid attention to the past five years of U.S. politics.

At least three factors could reverse the predicted fortune for the GOP. The first would be voter apathy by traditional Republicans, conservatives and people of faith. The second would be drum roll, please potential fallout from anything Donald Trump says, does or hints. And the third would be a full-court press by Democrats, aided by some in the mainstream media, to come across as suddenly moderate while metaphorically throwing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as far overboard as possible.

All three factors will happen to some extent. The question is, will some combination of them be enough to hold the Democratic majority in Congress after November?

Apparently Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnells (R-Ky.) main strategy for winning is to avoid mentioning anything that Republicans would do if they regained majority control.

The quote sometimes attributed to Napoleon Never interfere with an enemy while hes in the process of destroying himself makes sense if one believes the Democrats are failing across the board, but many Republican voters who have been burned before by the GOP leadership still want to hear a plan.

Polls indicate a red wave in November. Maybe so, but what if a substantial number of Republican voters adopt the unyielding position of Fool me 10 times, shame on you. Try to fool me again and Im not going to vote.

Impossible? Trumps election to the White House in 2016 should remind us all to expect the unexpected. McConnell and other entrenched elites of the Republican Party may think the partys more traditional voting bloc will never desert them, but they rarely walk in the shoes of working-class Republicans who, like everyone else, are feeling the brutal effects of the pandemic topped by skyrocketing inflation.

Just like the entrenched Democratic Party elites, these Republicans live in a bubble of favors, luxury, security, wealth and gold-plated health care plans. Theyre used to extravagant fundraisers, five-star resorts and the vacation homes of billionaire donors.

As the election draws nearer, we can assume that many of these voters who have been taken for granted by party leaders will have reached their saturation point regarding empty promises. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), spoke directly to the frustration of conservative voters when he released his 11-Point Plan to Rescue America.

Some believe the plan needed more editing and was released too soon, but its rally around conservative principles theme, much of it echoed by Trump, managed to elicit the wrath of McConnell and the small army of consultants who are loyal to him. In response to that noise, NRSC communications director and Scott campaign aide Chris Hartline said: We dont spend much time worrying about criticisms from anonymous Republican consultants who lost the Senate last cycle and who have gotten rich off maintaining the status quo.

Indeed, the McConnell wing of the GOP might be shocked by how many traditional voters stay home in November if they dont start seeing conservative planks actually nailed into the foundation of the party.

Next, regarding Trump, as Republicans have witnessed the past few years: The Don giveth, but the Don also taketh away big time. Will Trumps cult of personality bring more Republicans and independents into the voting booth, or will it drive them away (as he did in the 2020 Georgia runoff election and Arizonas general election by bashing Georgia Republicans, the voting process and the memory of the late John McCain)?

And then we come to what the Democrats can do to try to salvage victory. Some candidates, of course, will try to put as much distance as possible between them and the Biden administrations failing policies. Biden is flirting with the lowest approval ratings in history, and some see Harris as more out of touch with each passing day.

If calling out Biden and Harris, or making fun of them as we saw with the viral video in which Biden turned to shake hands with an invisible person and with Saturday Night Live mocking Harris can save the Democrats majority in Congress, you can bet that more liberal pundits and others will be willing to do so as the midterms approach.

Will the Democrats defy the odds and pull off an upset this fall? With 28 weeks to go, it would be delusional to think that a Republican victory is fait accompli.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. His latest book is The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.

Original post:
Republicans are more than capable of blowing the 2022 midterms - The Hill