Last week, I attended Bannock County’s quarterly Republican Central Committee meeting. It’s open to all registered Republicans, but I would have been blissfully unaware of this meeting if it weren’t for a few active committee members who gave me the heads-up. As I have complained in the past, the Bannock County GOP is a closed-off club that does its best to remain incognito and only jump through the bare minimum of hoops required to exist.
At this particular meeting was a presentation by the regional vice chair and fellow columnist Trent Clark on Republican ongoings in Bannock County. Of particular interest was a rule passed by the Idaho Republican Central Committee during the Summer of 2023. Article 13 of the Idaho Republican Party rules requires candidates who run for elected office as Republicans to sign a disclosure reinforcing their commitment to the Idaho Constitution and the Idaho Republican Party platforms. Article 20, Section 3 of the Idaho Republican Party rules creates a mechanism whereby local and state Central Committees can hold elected officials accountable for not following through with their commitment to uphold the Republican Party Platform. This mechanism includes censure and the ability to remove a candidate from the party’s ballot if they don’t represent the party in their elected position. Why does this matter?
As I noted in my prior piece, parties form based on voluntary association and commonly held beliefs. Two-thirds of all of Idaho’s Governors have been Republican, and the Republican distinction carries a lot of weight in electoral politics. A common moniker in Republican circles is the RINO or Republican In Name Only. This describes politicians who get elected as Republicans by Republican voters and then proceed to execute the duties of their office in a manner contrary to the shared beliefs of the Republican Party, and it’s happening at a staggering pace.
A recent study by the Institute For Legislative Analysis, an offshoot of the American Conservative Union, suggests that though a Republican Super Majority technically holds Idaho’s legislature, it is actually controlled in the Senate by Democrat-leaning legislators and maintains a much smaller majority in the House than Party affiliation suggests. When paired with Idaho’s significant registration crossover, whereby unaffiliated and Democrat voters cross the political aisle to have an undue influence in Republican Party politics, the ability of the Idaho Republican Party to adequately represent shared conservative beliefs is significantly hampered. The idea of voluntary association is drastically undermined. To date, the recourse voters have had was to remove these candidates from office, but the challenge has been overcoming money, name recognition, and cross-party voters.
A majority of American voters are uninvested voters. This isn’t a criticism or a fault. Few, if any, of us wish to dabble in the muck of electoral politics. It is the sausage-making part of civic engagement, and politics have become inescapable. They have come to consume society, including culture and entertainment, and the hope with every election is that it will be over and done with; we can take down all the obnoxious signs and return to the business of life. Unfortunately, what happens between those elections demands attention, so that what happens at the ballot box is impactful.
I applaud the steps taken by the Idaho Republican State Central Committee to bring another level of accountability to elected officials. The challenge presented in this scenario is the idea of a purity test and who is given the discretion to determine what is and what isn’t a Republican action. The answer to the who lies in local committee men and women who are your neighbors, and the what lies with the party platform. Defaulting to the RNC and the Idaho Republican Party platforms is a reasonable start. Article 13 should ensure that, at some level, elected officials affirm their commitment to our shared beliefs.
Photo by Luke Southern on Unsplash
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