Link to Proposed changes to platform.
Lee Ann Collier :
If you want to know why some of these counties, especially Ada voted a slate, (against the IDGOP rules, read Senator Jeff Siddoways platform proposal. See all the crossed out! All the agriculture stuff? Private property rights?, 10th Amendment? Free Markets, Faith and Reliance on God, Moral Issues, Prolife plank? homeschooling? Siddoway was carrying this for our gov. This is very much the same thing Kurk Sullivan , (Butches Chairman that started the vendetta) handed us in 2006. You go alongs need to check yourself?
Dan Roberts :
My view on the republican Convention.
What happens when you remove all notions of God out of the public square? I have my personal thoughts, but I am wondering at what Senator Jeff Siddoway from District 35–of Jefferson and Fremont Counties–was thinking when he proposed that the name of God be removed of all reference from the Republican platform? I’m really curious as to what his constituents think as well.
Senator Siddoway offered an entire platform change to the Republican Platform committee that was proposed last Friday at the their convention in Moscow Idaho–which included the redaction of any reference to God. His proposal was quickly struck down by the Chairman Peterson appointed committee.
This was only one of many battle skirmishes between party factions that eventually left much of the intended business of the convention undone.
Another large issues was the disqualification of 102 voting delegates from Ada County along with Power and Bannock Counties delegations for alleged violations of equal representation standards, and rules within the delegate selection process of the Republican Party.
Allegedly a secret caucus was held in Ada County that chose a slate of delegates favorable to the establishment side of the party at the exclusion of many who also wanted to attend. Using a slate is not a problem if there are not enough to fill the openings, but if there are more candidates than spaces, an election is in order.
The establishment delegates were not without their own allegations of corruption within the process–which seemed to arise as a defense against the stacking of their delegation positions. They claim that Chairman Peterson unfairly stacked the convention committees in order to keep the platform intact and ensure his future leadership.
As a participant in this process I can see–despite my of involvement in a faction–that fire was used to fight fire. The pot really is calling the kettle black on both sides.
The question still is lingering though, is one side more justifies in using these tactics that the other? Is one leading in a better direction? Well that depends on which side you are on, something it seems each of us must determine.
But back to God in the public square.
The Republican Party is a private party, a club if you will. Would the removal of a reference to God really make a big difference?
The constitution was meant to govern a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other, said John Adams.
With God being struck out of existence by the Federal Government in every place imaginable, doesn’t it just make sense that it disappear here also to meet public expectations, and to appeal more broadly to an obvious less religious public?
I my opinion and in the opinion of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that answer is an emphatic NO! In matters of style swim with the current, in matters of principle, stand like a rock! Jefferson
Establishment candidates that mentioned that this latest primary election was “a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party” meant it, and now we know some of what they wanted changed!
The lines have been drawn, the artillery is assembled, and the war has commenced. The casualties are beginning to become apparent to all.
The rectitude of Mr. Peterson’s intentions and those of the establishment will be judged by many now, but more in the future. What will we think 10, 20, or 50 years from now? Will defending the principles of liberty without the acknowledgment of God and a dependence on Him be justified or successful?
There is a just war theory in the Christian religion, and I hope that we that believe can agree that the acknowledgement of God in private as well as public organization is a just reason for a valiant, and what some may considered a “dirty fight”.
I certainly believe so!
Vito Barbieri : via Chumly
Idaho State GOP Convention Victory for taxpayers
As the so called ‘centrist’ Republicans decry the ‘gridlock’ at the recent state convention (purportedly caused by the deep divide within the Idaho State Republican Party), taxpayers should be rejoicing that finally top down policy is no longer the norm in the Idaho Republican Party.
Ada County, (which was unable to deliver the vote for our current governor in the May Primary), again, as it has done for several years, stacked it’s delegation in gross disregard of taxpayers fed up with business as usual. But more importantly, the Ada County process was knowingly in gross disregard of the Party Rules.
Here’s what happened:
After each election, each county central committee must elect new officers and take nominations for delegates to the state convention which follows the Primary Election. Each nominee must be voted upon separately.For at least a decade, and probably longer, Ada County has presented a ‘slate’ of candidates to the central committee to voice an up or down vote for the entire body of slate. This year only ‘Otter-matons’ were a part of the slate, and no sitting legislators, other ‘conservatives’, or others not conforming to the top-down control were excluded from the slate.
Each convention the credentials committee agrees that the rules were again violated but acquiesces to seating the delegation with the proviso that they need to quit violating the rules or ‘next time there will be ramifications.’ Each following convention there are no ramifications and the same admonition is voiced.
THIS TIME, there were appropriate ramifications. THIS TIME the credentials committee moved to disallow the Ada County delegation from being seated at the Convention. With this exclusion hanging over their head, every time consuming parliamentary option was thrown out to avoid the credentials committee from reporting to the whole their findings.
The three counties found to have grossly violated the rules were in the process of being removed from the convention by majority vote of the convention participants. Rather than suffer through a protracted and torturous parliamentary struggle, the convention, again my majority vote, adjourned at the time set in the published agenda.
The officers stay the same. The policy stays the same. There is still hope for Idaho taxpayers tired of the ‘central control’ advocated by the centrist Republicans.
Brent Regan :
The Idaho Republican Party State Convention Report
“We should pass a rule that the convention cannot be held on a Friday the 13th during a full moon.”
The Idaho Republican Party State Convention was historic and provided yet another example of how the relationship between citizens and their government is changing. One only has to look to the national debt to see that government is growing geometrically and with that growth comes increasing instances of abuse. Abuse of privacy (NSA), abuse of power (IRS), abuse of the truth (Benghazi, PPACA), abuse of veterans (VA), abuse of immigration; the list is seemingly endless. The abuses have triggered a response among the people that is manifesting in several ways. Dissatisfaction with Obamacare, a contracting economy, the president’s falling approval, the Bundy standoff, primary losses of establishment incumbents, and the meltdown of a political party convention. These are all symptoms of dissatisfaction with government. Citizens are tired of the abuses, tired of the lies, tired of the corruption, tired of the cronyism and are animated to action when the opportunity arises.
I was a delegate to the convention and a member of the Credentials Committee, which gave me a clear view of the sausage factory. Prior to the convention, delegates to the convention for each county are chosen by that county’s central committee. Republican Party rules require that anyone who is eligible and wants to attend the convention can be nominated. The precinct committeemen then individually elect delegates and alternates from the pool of nominees.
The Credentials Committee typically deals with simple things usually involving clerical errors and to make sure all the delegates who were properly elected can participate in the convention. This time the Credentials Committee was also presented with challenges to the delegations from Twin Falls, Bannock, Power and Ada counties. These challenges related to the process of delegate election and it was the task of the committee to determine if the delegates from those counties were properly selected and then report our findings to the general assembly the next day. All delegates, except those whose credentials were in question, would then vote to accept or reject our recommendations.
The committee considered each challenge in turn, hearing testimony, debating and then voting. In the end the Credentials Committee voted to recommend that the Power, Bannock and Ada County’s delegations credentials not be recognized as they were improperly selected. In one case the selection did not happen within the specified time and no reasonable explanation for the failure was given. In another there was no election, as required. In the case of ADA County, it was clear from testimony that the delegates were selected in a discriminatory process, contrary to party rules. Testimony was given that the Ada County delegation consisted entirely of people who supported Butch Otter in the primary. This fact was not refuted but simply dismissed as if it were a happy coincidence. Further proof of the bias came in the form of a “compromise” where a fraction of the party members who were denied the opportunity to be nominated to be a delegate would be seated. This “deal” was overwhelmingly rejected by the Credentials Committee.
To be clear, Russ Fulcher, primary candidate for governor and, to the best of my knowledge a Republican in good standing, was denied the opportunity to be nominated to be a delegate to the convention. If one is serious about party unity, your first action should be to embrace your vanquished opponent and demonstrate that unity as leader.
It was clear to me from the testimony that the Ada County Central Committee had attempted to “stack” their delegation in order to have a large voting block of 102 delegates. To do this they had to violate both the spirit and the letter of Republican Party rules. I suspect that ADA County, being the largest delegation, believed they were ‘the elephant in the room’ and that the Credentials Committee would not dare to deny them admission. What apparently they did not appreciate is that the room was full of elephants. The vote was 35 to 6 to recommend rejection the Ada County delegation.
The next day the convention immediately devolved into a long series of parliamentary procedural moves designed to forestall the inevitable. I say inevitable because the votes that were taken clearly showed that support for Ada County was not in the majority. Those that sought to exclude some from the convention were themselves to be excluded.
Mercifully the allotted time expired and the convention adjourned shortly after three PM and, while little on the agenda was accomplished, this was one of the most significant political conventions in Idaho history. Until now, the desire to accommodate the powerful trumped the rules. Past bad behavior, even with the solemn promise to be ‘good’ in the future, only promoted more bad behavior. “We have always done it this way” was a common mantra among the banished.
This convention has sent the clear message that there are rules and if you break them you do so at your own peril regardless of who you are or who you know. This is a core concept of our Republic that traces back to the Magna Carta. I suspect the ripples of this action will reach far into the political realms. Rules are more easily embraced when the consequences of breaking them are tangible.
While the near term effects may be painful, like a surgery to repair an injury, the long term holds benefits if we accept the lessons presented. Remember that if the Ada, Bannock and Power County complaints had been without merit, the outcome would have been completely different.
If party unity is the goal, perhaps the quickest path is for the chairmen of those counties to issue apologies for the problems that arose and to request that the Executive Committee of the party work to clarify and tighten the rules to prevent future problems. The calls for unity are hollow if that unity is not built upon a solid foundation of Republican virtues.
I was very proud of our Kootenai County delegation and the majority of the other delegates that joined us to stand for the rule of law, fairness, liberty, honesty and equality of opportunity and I commend all of the delegates for their willingness to engage in the labors required of freedom.
As for party unity, I am willing to stand with anyone who is willing to stand with me on the Republican Platform and work together to preserve and protect the legacy of freedom entrusted to us for generations yet to come.
It was a convention to remember, the likes of which I doubt we shall ever see again….with luck.
Brent Regan
Kootenai County
June 15th, 2014
Report from BenSwan.com
In Idaho, divisions between rural and urban activists and grassroots and establishment forces came to a head at last weekend’s state-wide Republican Party convention. The three-day convention, which concluded on Saturday, convened in Moscow, with delegates from across the state meeting in an effort to elect party officers and choose platform positions.
Gresham Bouma
The Credentials Committee of the 2014 Idaho Republican Party Convention
As a member of the recently transacted Credentials Committee, I want to share my own account of what happened at our Convention. In days leading up to the Convention we began to get e-mails for committee members with attachments complaining of abuses of the delegate selection process. Some of the complaints seemed a little obscure and improperly defined, and I was not at all sure that there were any violations that had enough evidence to justify discipline at the convention. I concluded after a lot of reading that I would only be able to deny seating to delegates if there were clear violations of the spirit and intent of the rules surrounding their selection. If the process leading up the delegate selection did not live up to the requirements to have an open meeting where delegates were nominated and elected, then it was my opinion that the rules had been broken. And before discipline as severe as not seating would be justified, the violations would have to be fairly flagrant as well as causing significant harm to the offended party.
It was only after having heard testimony from both sides in every case that our committee took action with, in every case, a large majority. Ada County is probably the most illustrative of what went on in the counties in question so I will use them as the case in point. It became apparent after much testimony that a slate of delegates had been developed outside of the meeting, and this slate had been purged of people who did not meet certain requirements. It is hard to know what exactly those requirements were, but it appeared that people who did not support the current governor in the latest primary were not welcome on the list although many of them had expressed a desire to be delegates before the meeting. Others had expected the opportunity to become delegates at the reorg meeting since the original agenda included a process where Ada County was to break out into districts within the county and nominate and elect delegates within those districts, a fair and reasonable method of addressing the large size of the task of selecting over a hundred delegates. In Ada as well as the other counties where a pre-planned slate of delegates was presented, there was also the practice of placing and/or electing individuals with the right leaning as delegates at both the county level and the district level, thus blocking the “opposition” from being able to run for the delegate position. In my opinion practices like these pervert the very purpose of the reorg meeting. In summary: at the reorganization meeting in Ada County the original agenda included a plan to nominate and elect delegates to the convention in a fair and open process. That plan was rejected so that a pre-laundered list could be substituted for that process. But that was not good enough for the “winners” and they also put some of the same delegates in at the district level, thus filling up those slots so that they remained empty of the “wrong” sort of people.
I believe that when you act to deprive someone else of their rightful opportunity, you deserve to lose that same opportunity, so in my opinion those people who conspired to do these things lost their right to be seated at the convention. They had not only defrauded the “opposition”, but had also done the same to people (delegates) on their own side who would have otherwise gone anyway and been seated. They harmed both friend and foe with their shenanigans.
I don’t know about you, but I think that the precinct person position is one which should not only be there to promote the party locally, but it also fulfills another important function. It should represent the people that elect it and their interests. It promotes the interests of the grassroots of the party and gives those interests a voice at the convention through the platform and resolutions adopted. I think that the governor’s office and the legislature wield enough power in their offices, and should not use the office of precinct person to extend power over the party. I hope that the party remains a voice for the people and not merely an extension of power for whoever the sitting governor is. I hope that what happened at this convention results in a renewed commitment to having open reorg meetings where candidates are nominated and elected in a reasonable manner. Where slates of candidates are elected, the process of developing those slates becomes very important as well as the circumstances surrounding their imposition on any protesting minority. While many will blame the Credentials Committee for derailing the Convention, the train came off the tracks at those county reorg meetings where the system, and therefore people, were abused. I hope that future Credentials Committees will act with the same commitment to integrity since that is the only road to unity. Unity will never be achieved by turning a blind eye to flagrant violations of the rules and what they are intended to uphold.
Thanks for reading,
Gresham Bouma
Latah County