It’s a new move in Idaho, this process on the part of some local Republican county central committees to censure elected officials, who have won their party’s nomination in primary elections, on grounds that they inadequately dance to the tune of party officials.
The latest to try this has been the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee. (Social note which may help describe the group’s perspective: Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake is scheduled to be their Lincoln Day speaker next month.) The Bonneville Republicans last week voted to censure two local Republican legislators, Senator Kevin Cook and Representative Stephanie Mickelson. Leaders in the county organization have been critical of them for a while, though this development takes things to a new level.
Two censures from a Republican committee (whether legislative district, county or state organization), under current rules, can lead to a demand that the elected official, though nominated and elected as a Republican, “remove Party support and prohibit the use of Republican Party identifiers†in their campaign.
That has the sound of a serious threat, since so many Idaho voters apparently look for those Republican identifiers, and not much more (such as candidate background, qualifications and well-thought-out positions), when deciding how to fill elected offices.
In an opinion piece, Mickelson noted that, “When I ran for office, I needed to secure a majority of votes from over 52,000 people in my district. Now, 20 precinct committeemen on the District 32 Legislative Committee will vote on whether I can call myself a Republican. Of those 20, only nine were elected. The other 11 were appointed.†Which, she asked, ought to have primacy?
Mickelson also said that if a demand actually is made to remove any kind of party support, “Some have suggested they’ll pursue legal action to enforce this decision.†Indeed some have suggested as much, and it would be interesting to see how that would play out in a court of law.
But there’s also a larger question: Who gets to call themselves a Republican, or a Democrat, or something else, for that matter?
Idaho Democrats and other groups of voters haven’t made much of an issue out of it (nor have the minor parties), and the Republicans whose political dominance in the state isn’t in any way immediately under threat, likewise seldom did, until recently. If someone was considered far enough outside the party’s mainstream (however that might be defined), the usual view was that they could be defeated at a primary election.
That approach began to change after 2011 when, after a court decision allowing political parties to limit their primaries to registered members, Idaho Republicans closed their primaries to allow party registrants only. (Other Idaho parties have not chosen that limitation.) Of course, anyone could register as a Republican, so that didn’t completely solve the (perceived) problem of participation by non-true believers.
As the Idaho Republican party structure has been taken over increasingly by more extreme groups, a conflict between the party and its voters started to become almost inevitable. Now we’re starting to see it arrive.
There’s a key question here: Who gets to decide what a real Republican is? This isn’t a one-sided question. A lot of long-time Republican former elected officials have decried the current party leadership – and some of its elected officials – as virtual invaders who have taken the party far away from its roots and meaning. There’s a real dispute about what a real Republican is or should be.
One approach since has been growing imposition of doctrine and dogma, and ever more extreme positions in party platforms and resolutions: You must support all of this, or else you’re not a real Republican.
What’s worth pointing out is how different this is from the historic norm, when the decision of what was a “real†Republican (or Democrat) was left to the people who voted in the primaries, even if that process sometimes was a little messy. Of course, when you have a one-party state, those stakes get higher.
And when that happens, the extremes become more so.
(image/Needpix)
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