It’s time to bring Idaho out of Trumpism by voting in the Republican primary

The damage Donald Trump has inflicted on Idaho and its politics and government runs deep and wide across the state.

His recent endorsement of gun-toter and bar owner Janice McGeachin, who also managed to get elected lieutenant governor and now challenges Gov. Brad Little for the state’s top political job, is far from the only impact Trump has had on a party running far to the right.

Before the 2022 elections are over next year, Trump’s Svengali-hold on the Idaho Republican Party will be felt in all but the most minor races. Idaho’s Republican candidates, if they haven’t already, will rush to brandish their allegiance to the man who has redefined the Republican Party as a party of extremists.

Trump’s influence on Republican Party leadership was evident recently when Gov. Little escaped Lt. Gov. McGeachin’s watchful eye and headed for Mar-a-Lago to attend a Trumpian gala called America First.

As one who’s been in those once-upon-a-time smoked-filled rooms where campaign advisers offer advice on how to win the next election, I can just hear Little’s staff telling him to head for Florida where he can pick up Trump’s endorsement or at least keep McGeachin from getting Trump’s blessing.

A lot of good that did, as Trump endorsed McGeachin days later, claiming she was an early MAGA supporter. Gone are the days when qualifications for office were offered as the reason for an endorsement. In the Trumpian political world, it’s just about how fast she donned that red MAGA cap and kissed the ring of the defeated president.

U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson also found himself in the clutches of the new normal of the Republican Party. The ethics-deficient and Trump sycophant, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, must have threatened to rip Simpson’s fingernails out if he didn’t fall in the line with Trump Republicans and vote against President Biden’s infrastructure bill.

What else could possibly account for Simpson’s vote against an infrastructure bill that won the votes of Idaho’s two conservative senators? There’s the best evidence yet that Trump has infected the thinking of right-of-center conservatives like Simpson who would normally be an easy vote for a bill that brings so much funding and projects back to Idaho.

Simpson has shared his thoughts about retiring over the years, but this latest vote that garnered bipartisan support in the House of Representatives where Simpson sits shows he just wants to return to D.C.

It’s sad to see a congressman who chalks up reasonable positions on issues like the removal of the four dams on the Lower Snake River and protection for Idaho wilderness forced to accommodate the right wing of his party by voting no on a bill that would have given him the opportunity to make good on his bragging rights that he works with Democrats on bipartisan initiatives. Here was a no-brainer on the bipartisan front, but he chose to punt.

It’s also sad to see the Idaho Republican Party give Simpson, who has served the party loyally for many years, a vote of no confidence because he has proposed the removal of the dams. It’s just another indication of the rigid and inflexible standards the Republican Party applies to its public officials.

The Republican tent that once included moderates and conservatives is now the size of a handkerchief.

It’s hard to tell whether Simpson’s primary opponent, Bryan Smith, is a serious challenge for him or is just another candidate allowing Simpson to raise lots of campaign cash for a race the incumbent is likely to win by his usual 60% victory margins.

This time around, Trump seems to be making the difference, as the Idaho Republican Party stands at attention to whatever is Trump’s latest pronouncement. A vice chair of the right wing Idaho Freedom Foundation’s board of directors, Smith sings from the Trump hymnal and accuses Simpson of an “anti-Trump voting record” even though Simpson voted against Trump’s impeachment twice and voted with Trump 93% of the time.

As far as the Trumpsters are concerned, Simpson’s mortal sin was his vote to pursue a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection, with 35 House Republicans voting accordingly. And Smith is not about to let Republican voters forget it as he plays stooge for Trump.

Trump’s refusal to condemn 535 insurrectionists who assaulted 140 police officers and injured 138, one of whom died of his injuries, became the Republican Party line, and Bryan Smith is marching in support of the brownshirt insurrectionists.

Then there’s Ammon Bundy, another of Trump’s choirboys whose storming of the Idaho Capitol last January squares with Trump’s refusal to condemn the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last January. Trump’s presence on the American political scene has had an enormous influence in Idaho, a state whose increasingly conservative politics didn’t need any assist from Trump.

In these darkest days of Idaho politics and government, there is a ray of hope that common sense and good judgment can still prevail over hysterical and misguided legislative efforts of right-wing legislators who believe it’s their right not to get vaccinated.

Rep. Fred Wood, a physician himself, and chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee in the Idaho House of Representatives, refused to hear nine bills in the recent special session because he disagreed with the Legislature preventing employers from imposing vaccine mandates for their employees. Too bad some of Wood’s intestinal fortitude doesn’t rub off on his fellow Republicans.

We won’t know until May 2022 whether Idaho voters showing up to vote in the Republican primary will replace Little and Simpson with two of Idaho’s most dedicated Trump bootlickers. Little and Simpson are hardly perfect specimens of independence of mind in these trying times, but they are better choices than their primary opponents, Janice McGeachin or Bryan Smith, both of whom reek of Trump’s disregard for democratic government.

May’s Republican primary will be the first opportunity Idaho voters will have to weigh in at the ballot box on the influence of a defeated president who inspired a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Voters must not forget that all taxpayers pay for Idaho’s primary elections. Just because Republican legislators have erected barriers to prevent Democrats and independents from crossing over to the Republican primary does not mean those barriers are impenetrable.

As I suggested in a previous column, now is the time to call the county election office to find out how to cast a Republican ballot. The stakes have never been higher for Idaho and for our nation. And voters can return to their philosophical roots in the general election once they erase extremists from the Idaho ballot.