Posts published in “Day: October 20, 2023”

The Idaho Republican Party has made a regular practice of taking shots at Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation, but now they’re firing at a delegation member whose gutsy actions have the effect of helping - or trying to - the Republican Party nationally.

To see that, though, you have to expand your field of vision a little beyond Idaho, to the places where Republicans are not so entrenched that “too extreme” actually is a political problem.

This last week Representative Mike Simpson voted, twice, to elevate Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise to speaker, the state party organization was outraged, all but writing him out of the party for not voting instead for the bomb-throwing Representative Jim Jordan, one of the most controversial politicians in the country.

From the party’s statement: “We urge our Congressman to reconsider his position and refocus his efforts on addressing the significant issues confronting our constituents — rather than waste his time engaging in protest votes and parliamentary delay tactics. The people of Idaho expect Mike Simpson to represent their concerns and prioritize their needs above political games and partisan divisions.”

Riotously rich, of course, since “protest votes and parliamentary delay tactics” - as for example Jordan’s efforts to block confirmation of the 2020 presidential election vote and his refusal to this day to accept those results - long have been Jordan's stock in trade, along with explosive red-meat rhetoric.

Simpson has been (as this is written on Thursday) one of about a score of Republican house members blocking Jordan's rise to the speakership. The group draws from various segments of the Republican caucus, and the no votes seem to have varied motivations.

Congressional veteran Simpson has become a highly effective legislator working closely for many years with House Republican leadership. He is an institutionalist who clearly loves the U.S. House of Representatives, and as such on the far end of the spectrum from Jordan. He is on the House Appropriations Committee, one of the powerful “cardinals,” who as a group are protective of the budgeting process and concerned about what Jordan might do to it. A number of House appropriators, including the committee chair, are in the anti-Jordan group.

In a tweet, Simpson said he thought Scalise was the right choice for  speaker, but added, “Intimidation and threatening tactics do not - and will not - work.” Others among the antis have made similar comments. A number of the anti-Jordan voters have been getting death threats, to themselves, their families and their staff.

Simpson’s stand will doubtless encourage another primary challenge from the right. Simpson’s tweet (and his votes) draw responses like this one: “Steve Scalise is not even running you RINO. You have made it clear that you don’t care about your constituents and the reason you were elected. You are a representative. Do your dam job and stop playing games. Enjoy your last term in Congress.”

But one additional element of motivation (decisions like this one usually have a whole matrix of factors) for Simpson, however, could be political in a sense beyond his personal interest.

He might be thinking about another one of the score of antis, the one whose district is geographically closest to his if far removed politically: Representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a freshman Republican from Oregon, representing a district south of Portland, and one of the four or five most vulnerable Republican House members.

Her district has a slight Democratic tilt, in spite of which she narrowly won election in 2022. Since then she has been making the right moves toward winning a second term. She is facing a strong Democratic challenge (three first-rank contenders, one of whom beat Chavez-DeRemer twice previously in state legislative races) and she can afford no missteps. But her national party has been providing plenty of those, and Democrats in Oregon have been beyond eager to pounce.

You can multiply DeRemer’s case by a couple of dozen seats nationally.

The Idaho Republican Party may be disinterested in whether Republicans nationally fare well in next year’s elections, but it might just be that Simpson is bearing it in mind.

One more thing that should be said as a matter of motivation: The hard core doesn’t get to call Simpson a “squish” any more. He’s one of those showing some actual backbone.