Letter to the Editor

Historians will recall, in the distant past, maybe as far back as 2021, when the positions and priorities of the Idaho Republican Party were predictable. This consistency was even labeled by outside pundits: “Idaho’s pragmatic but principled conservatism.”

To demonstrate what has changed consider the dilemma of the gay libertarian newlyweds. At the height of a pandemic, they boldly walk maskless into an artisan bakery and demand a wedding cake. Can the baker be forced to do business with them?

If you ask current GOP chair Dorothy Moon (and the small clique surrounding her) the answer is: “Depends on whether they’re asking as gays, or as maskless.” Moon’s party supports a public accommodation doctrine requiring businesses to serve masked and unmasked. Threats of cancellation from the baker’s insurer are not the party’s concern.

But a same-sex wedding cake asks the baker to be creative against his religious conviction. So, we just have to find a Supreme Court nominee who backs a public accommodation doctrine overriding safety practices and prudent business decisions, but not religious beliefs.

Good luck with that.

Looking through the platforms, resolutions, press releases, and public announcements of Chairwoman Moon, don’t expect intellectual consistency. The party of “the Rule of Law” now has multiple passages of its own rules found to be “inconsistent with state law.”

Consider the party’s objection to the pending “Open Primaries” initiative. If it qualifies for Idaho’s ballot this Fall, Idaho could have a “party-less” blanket primary like what Washington State won from the Supreme Court in 2008. In that ruling, the high court okayed cutting “party organizations” out of state-run primaries.

But Justice Scalia wrote the conservative’s passionate dissent. “A party’s defining act is the selection of a candidate and advocacy of that candidate’s election by conferring upon him the party’s endorsement,” he argued. “Republican” means nothing if it doesn’t connotate the person around whom a party has rallied, whose policies become the “promise” upon which the general election campaign is based.

This line of reasoning was never directly refuted by the court’s majority. And time has proven Scalia right. Does anyone think the Republican platform can spell out a Ukraine policy binding on Donald Trump? No. That isn’t happening. Scalia was correct declaring “who is nominated” speaks louder than any platform, press release, or public statement of Party officers.

As opponents of “Open Primaries,” you would expect the Idaho GOP to back Scalia. You’d be wrong. Most of the “Moon team” sides with the court’s majority, believing candidates should be marionettes on strings controlled by “platform enforcement tribunals.”

The 2008 liberal majority shared Moon’s assertion that parties are strictly private organizations. Party insiders list their interests (in platforms, resolutions, etc.) and give candidates a checklist, just like any special interest group or Chamber of Commerce. The state is under no obligation to list every organization whose questionnaire a candidate answered.

Chambers of Commerce don’t get their name, or endorsement, printed on the ballot. “Open Primaries” was found constitutional only because the liberal majority viewed political parties as “just another lobby,” non-essential to the electoral process.

Scalia-led conservatives dissented, asserting parties were where voters coalesce around ideas, best defined by whom they nominate. The first GOP platform was abolitionist, but the nomination of John C. Fremont didn’t cause the South to secede. It was not the anti-slavery platform of 1860 that triggered the Civil War. It was the election of an anti-slavery President.

To the court’s liberals, parties are mere sticks, prodding elected officials into supporting their narrow interests, easily excluded from the ballot. To conservative justices, parties are how voters instill values into government, by pulling the rope that gets like-minded individuals into office. Voters deserve to know whose team is pulling for a candidate.

Is the party a stick? Or a rope? It would be nice if Chairwoman Moon would pick a side.

Trent Clark of Soda Springs is President and CEO of Customalting Inc. and has served in the leadership of Idaho business, politics, workforce, and humanities education.