We all know this advice: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Sadly, if I tried that, my campaign would be as silent as the voice of reason at this month’s Idaho Republican Party convention in Coeur d’Alene.
The nicest thing I can say about that convention is that, while the convention was terrible for freedom, it was great for irony!
The people who attended all have “freedom” and “liberty” tattooed to their shirts, bumpers, buttons, flags, and forearms. Yet, they re-elected an anti-freedom chairwoman, Dorothy Moon, and doubled-down revoking the last 100 years of gains for women’s rights.
One hundred years? Well, they didn’t propose revoking the 19th Amendment, which guarantees a woman’s right to vote, but I doubt the idea offends them. They did pass a platform plank to revoke every Idahoan’s right to vote for Idaho’s U.S. senators.
In the post-Roe v. Wade era, only fools, appeasers, and cowards deny the danger that extreme, anti-freedom forces in the Republican Party pose.
As for specifically taking away the rights of women, these lovers of “freedom and liberty” declare that embryos are people and that abortions (with zero exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of a pregnant person) be classified as murders. Thus, their platform reads, “We support the criminalization of all murders by abortion within the state’s jurisdiction.”
That means no more in vitro fertilization, IVF.
Logic tells me there must be energy behind finding ways to allow the State to track, record, and intercept our mail. Otherwise, Idaho women still have freedom to buy abortion pills. And, the State will need to prosecute that illicit mailing as murder and attempted murder.
Does any of this feel remotely like freedom to you? Does it look like liberty?
It sure does to my opponent, current Gov. Brad Little.
Mr. Little just sent a fundraising letter declaring that he wants to “KEEP IDAHO RED.”
Ironically, Mr. Little bragged about his Idaho Launch program, which provides workforce training grants, as proof that Idaho Dems aren’t helping. Come on, Brad. That’s nuts. Not only were Democrats crucial for passing that program, IDGOP Chair Moon and her anti-freedom flag wavers have declared they don’t want Idaho funding education past high school—that’s the Red State opposing good ideas, not Democrats.
It’s worth repeating: Moon and her red state radicals want to end state-funding for higher education. That’s Idaho Republicans proposing a HUGE TUITION HIKE on Idaho families.
It’s all very very bad. And, by now, this isn’t the absent rambling from Idaho’s lunatic fringe that we can ignore. These are policy objectives that Brad Little will let become law, even if he whines about it a little. These ideas are what Idaho Republican lawmakers will champion. These ideas could potentially become instruments of State oppression because a few people—out-of-touch, mean people who only love freedom when it’s written on a t-shirt—held secret deliberations for a couple days in Coeur d’Alene.
It’s true. I have nothing nice to say about Brad Little, or Dorothy Moon, or her beady-eyed gang of red state radicals dead set on taking away our rights.
So, my campaign will operate under this guideline: It doesn’t matter if you can’t say anything nice as long as you’re telling the truth.