Little’s cowardly reversal: Idaho GOP cedes to extremist hate | Opinion

The sudden — you might even call it brutal — dismissal recently of a 30-year veteran of the Idaho Human Rights Commission is, sadly, all the proof anyone needs as to what has happened to the state’s Republican Party, and the man who pretends to lead it.

Estella Zamora, of Caldwell, a longtime human rights activist with a stellar reputation that extends beyond Idaho, was first appointed to the commission by Democratic Gov. Cecil D. Andrus and re-appointed numerous times by Republican governors. Last summer, Gov. Brad Little again re-appointed Zamora. Then without explanation, Little abruptly withdrew Zamora’s appointment this month, just as a state Senate committee was scheduled to consider her nomination.

Little hasn’t had the courtesy to explain himself to Zamora or to the public, but it’s clear his cowardly reversal was prompted by the manufactured outrage of the white Christian nationalists who call the shots in Idaho government.

Brian Almon, who identifies himself as “a Christian, husband, father, and descendant of American pioneers” started the smears against Zamora by critiquing her Facebook page, particularly comments that deplored the recent violent excesses of immigration enforcement officers in Minnesota.

As Almon, a Washington state migrant who has worked for the state Republican Party and the extremely right wing Idaho Freedom Foundation, wrote: “A quick perusal of Zamora’s Facebook page shows constant agitation against President Trump, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the rule of law in America.”

Almon said he worries about “the way in which people like her are attempting to cast immigration enforcement as a human rights issue, rather than a rule-of-law issue. That is perhaps my biggest concern should she continue in her position on the commission. The IHRC already dabbles in left-wing social justice — will it start to use its authority and weight to oppose immigration enforcement? Will it twist the rule of law into an explicitly racial or ethnic controversy?”

That and a social media post from state Senate President Kelly Anthon, a Burley Republican, appears to be all it took for Little to cave.

But the crass treatment of a widely respected human rights advocate says much more about Little’s evolution from principled conservative to hard right panderer than it does about Estella Zamora’s perfectly reasonable concerns about a militarized federal police force terrorizing and killing people in the homes and streets of a major American city.

For the record, the Idaho Human Rights Commission exists to implement the state’s own anti-discrimination law, and part of that responsibility is to advocate for, well, human rights and against discrimination for everyone. Zamora has spent her life on such work making sure everyone is treated fairly. It has no jurisdiction over ICE, but the commission can see human rights abuses that Brad Little and the state GOP opt to ignore.

That Little was unwilling to defend Zamora’s right to speak out, as millions of Americans are, against people being snatched without warrants, children being kidnapped from school yards and protesters being murdered finally signals that officially Idaho has given up any pretense of supporting human and civil rights.

Rather than the party of the late Republican Gov. Phil Batt, who helped create the Human Rights Commission and devoted a lifetime to the simple but apparently now controversial notion that all humans have rights that must not be trampled, the Idaho GOP is consumed with disdain — hatred even — for anyone who disagrees.

The party that once saw a Democratic governor, John Evans, work with a Republican attorney general, Jim Jones, to battle the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations now welcomes white nationalists with open arms. The once popular bipartisan idea that “Idaho is Too Great to Hate” has morphed into “Idaho is Only for Angry White Men.”

The Idaho Republican Party devotes itself today to nasty debates about bathroom use, outlaws Pride Flags, censors library books, does all it can to marginalize the state’s LGBTQ+ community and is absurdly fixated on the tiny number of transgender Idahoans. The party leadership demands total fidelity to a man with 34 felony fraud convictions and insists that the violent lawlessness directed against people of color that we are seeing every day is merely “normal” law enforcement.

As Brad Little seeks a third term as governor, it’s clear he has made his peace with his party’s right-wing hatefulness. He might have chosen a different course from the beginning of his time as governor, but that would have required conviction, leadership and a willingness to confront extremism. He opted to embrace extremism instead. He now finds his political career defined by being on the wrong side of history. This sorry episode should and will taint whatever legacy he hopes to have.

That he has refused to explain the extraordinarily unusual abandonment of one of his own appointees and couldn’t muster the courage to tell Estella Zamora of his abandonment betrays Little’s own unease with this recreant governorship. As a man without either conviction or courage, he is a true model for the modern elected Republican.

Beyond the abject silliness of a right-wing activist’s attacks on a human rights activist’s support for human rights, the craven use by Brian Almon of the phrase “the rule of law” in the context of bashing Zamora’s criticism of immigration enforcement is beyond bizarre.

Over the last month federal judges from Massachusetts to Oregon have over and over condemned the Trump administration and its agents for disregarding “the rule of law” in its enforcement actions.

“There has been an undeniable move by the Government in the past month to defy court orders or at least to stretch the legal process to the breaking point in an attempt to deny noncitizens their due process rights,” said Minnesota District Judge Michael Davis.

Judge Patrick Schiltz, the chief judge on Minnesota’s federal bench, recently said, “ICE is not a law unto itself.” The judge estimated, conservatively, that ICE had violated court orders by Minnesota judges 96 times in January alone.

Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee in Rhode Island, as Politico reported, recently ruled, “It seems clear that the Court can conclude that the [administration] willfully violated two of this Court’s orders and willfully misrepresented facts to the Court.”

Even more pointedly, Fred Biery, a federal judge in the Western District of Texas, granted a petition freeing an Ecuadoran man along with his 5-year old son who were legally seeking asylum. The man, Adrian Conejo Arias, and his son Liam were detained in Minneapolis and sent to detention in Texas all without a hint of due process.

“The case,” Judge Biery wrote, “has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.”

The judge added: “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.”

The true rejecters of “the rule of law” are those who unquestioningly applaud the tactics that Estella Zamora and millions of Americans abhor. These protests — on Facebook, on the streets of Minneapolis and on the Idaho Statehouse steps — do not make these Americans “woke” or “radical Marxists” or “domestic terrorists.” They are simply citizens who believe their own government has a responsibility to act within the law and to act with genuine regard for human rights.

Make no mistake, the governor’s abandonment of Estella Zamora will not be the end of Idaho’s retreat on human rights. The commission has long been in GOP crosshairs. Little’s cowardice will embolden those who demonize the very idea of human rights, and he’s lost whatever moral advantage Phil Batt’s legacy provided him.

The governor’s self-inflicted defenestration will make him politically weaker across the board. If he won’t defend something as important as the free speech rights of a person who has devoted her life to helping people who most need help, then what will he defend?

Better yet, why does he want to be governor again if he can’t muster the courage to stand up against pressure and threats from a right-wing blogger?

As Oregon District Judge Michael H. Simon wrote recently in enjoining ICE from deploying less-lethal munitions and chemicals at protesters, “In a well-functioning constitutional democratic republic, free speech, courageous newsgathering, and nonviolent protest are all permitted, respected, and even celebrated. In an authoritarian regime, that is not the case. Our nation is now at a crossroads.”

Brad Little came to the crossroads and chose the road most of his party has chosen to travel. He’s now firmly on the side of violence and lawlessness, and he’s gutless enough to make an example of a 72-year-old woman who dared to speak truth to those with a “perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty.”

Marc C. Johnson served as press secretary and chief of staff to Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus. His latest book is “Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate” published by the University of Oklahoma Press.