By Mike Weland
Publisher
Last weekend, around seven-percent of Idaho’s registered Republicans came together and showed their strong favor of MAGA and Donald Trump, hardly a referendum on which to base Dorothy Moon’s resounding declaration, “Idaho is Trump country.” Sure, Idaho has more than its share of radicals and will most likely favor Trump in November. Idaho is a bastion of conservative Republican values, and many of its once stalwart members have been swayed toward the radical faction of the party.
But the radical faction as represented by leaders such as Dorothy Moon, Scott Herndon, Heather Scott and more in Idaho, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Paul Gosar et al in Washington D.C. are not conservative. They coopted the title.
Conservatives believe in individual freedoms, that all people are endowed with rights that can’t be taken away. Conservatives believe in the rule of law, in human dignity, fiscal responsibility, free markets, peace through strength. Limited government.
These new “conservatives” want various things; personal power, to destroy the constitution, to impose their religion, their morals, on others. To curtail individual freedoms in favor of uniformity, to strip from those who don’t believe as they do the rights they demand as unalienable.
They want to rule by fiat, they want the laws to apply to others but not to them. They want to legislate not what others do, but what they think. And they hear what conforms to their beliefs, listen to those who say what they want to hear, not what is true, even when the truth is obvious.
“Millions of us believe!” they shout in unison.
And that’s the shame of it. A lie is a lie. That millions would rather believe the liar and the lies than see or admit they’ve been lied to by a con man, a consummate huckster.
Trump is possessed of a singular forte; he is very good at taking credit where none is due and laying blame where none is warranted. His presidency was an unmitigated disaster and yet the MAGA sing his praises, based not on what the data and evidence shows, but chapter and verse what he claims. He colluded with Russia to interfere in his favor in the 2016 election, tried to coerce the president of Ukraine to sway the election of 2020 his way.
He is the first president to foment an insurrection, the first to deliberately and with malice undermine trust in this nation’s electoral process, the first to refuse the peaceful transfer of power, the first to spend the first years of his post presidency attempting to assassinate the character of the man who beat him.
He is the first ex-president to be indicted of a crime, let alone 91 felonies in four jurisdictions, the first to be found guilty in a civil trial of sex abuse, the first ordered to pay the woman he sexually molested.
He is the first to proclaim that corrupt prosecutors in weaponized agencies are after him … no, wait … after you, he’s just standing in the way, the first president to proclaim that no president, he nor any other, could carry out the duties of that office without blanket immunity from prosecution, then promises to direct his Department of Justice on day one to go after Joe Biden and his “crime family.”
He is the first president to state his willingness to overturn the constitution, the first to tell the nation in detail what he will do if reelected and only then do his MAGA say he might be stretching the truth, just a little bit.
That a once proud Republican Party is in thrall to such a man is a disgrace. That long-time Idaho Republican leaders Mike Crapo, Mike Simson and Jim Risch and many others nation-wide would choose to grovel at Trump’s feet rather than stand up to him is bad. That they would deliberately emulate his rhetoric and promulgate his lies is a sad indictment against their character, their courage and their honor.
For the Idaho Republican Party to allow their most radical sect to write the rules of the 2024 presidential caucus and stack the deck to guarantee the result shows clearly that they have nothing to offer but platitudes, propaganda and perjury.
No matter how it turns out, November 5, 2024, is going to be a momentous day in our nation’s short history, as we will not only decide who will return to the White House. On that day, we shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.