Idaho Republican legislators have shot down a startling number of extremist bills | Opinion
Do our eyes and ears deceive us?
Is something different this year in the Idaho Legislature?
This session we’ve seen something we don’t see nearly enough of: reasoned and reasonable debate and discussion leading to prudent, measured decision-making.
First, for those who don’t follow along, here’s the standard operating procedure in the Idaho Legislature: Several people, including average citizens, doctors, lawyers, teachers, experts come to the state Capitol to testify against a really bad bill before a committee. The bill gets passed anyway. Why bother even having public testimony at all?
But something happened this year. Something’s different.
Perhaps it all started when Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, introduced a ridiculous bill to get rid of scientifically accepted terms “embryo” and “fetus” and replace them with “preborn child.”
Fortunately, a doctor who is an in vitro fertilization specialist testified to tell the legislators they were grievously misguided.
The committee did something remarkable: Its members listened and voted to hold the bill in committee.
A one-off, you might say, a fluke.
But then a bill to get rid of a law banning domestic terrorism died, and then a bill to give a tax credit to people who don’t want to send their kids to taxpayer-funded public schools died.
Rep. Bruce Skaug’s bizarre bill to let the Idaho attorney general go after city and county officials was killed. Skaug’s unserious bill to impose a mandatory fine of $420 for any amount of marijuana in Idaho also failed in committee.
We were starting to see a trend.
A bill to ban certain allowances for teachers unions failed, and a bill to require insurers provide at least a six-month supply of prescribed contraceptives passed, a no-brainer in a state that bans abortions.
A bill to repeal voter-approved Medicaid expansion was held in committee.
After much testimony, debate and sincere, honest deliberation among legislators, a bill to force school districts to allow employees to carry guns in school was held in committee.
A senator’s loony bill to strip powers from health districts died in committee. (Those on the far right are apparently still mad at attempts to maintain public health and safety during the pandemic. No word yet on whether they want to strip police powers over enforcing speed limits and traffic signals.)
A ridiculous, pointless memorial calling for the impeachment of the president failed.
These votes are all the more significant this year, an election year, when moderate Republicans face threats of getting an extremist primary opponent.
What’s going on here?
Republicans come to their senses?
Perhaps some Republican legislators are simply coming to their senses.
Perhaps they’re no longer listening to the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which seems to have lost its power lately, especially under new president Ron Nate.
Perhaps they’ve actually become emboldened now that Idaho Republican Party chairwoman Dorothy Moon has established an outlandish Republican Party platform purity test that gives House Speaker Mike Moyle a grade of D- and no fewer than 41 Republican legislators, including the likes of Sen. Todd Lakey and Reps. Wendy Horman and Rod Furniss, grades of F.
Talk about losing all credibility.
Or maybe it’s because of the Soviet Politburo-style tribunals in which Idaho Republican county central committees are censuring such Republican legislators as Sen. Kevin Cook and Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen for not being extreme enough.
“You deserve to know that some people within the party believe they should call all the shots,” Mickelsen wrote in a guest op-ed in the Idaho Statesman this month.
Perhaps we’re being overly optimistic, but in this session, it seems as if more Republican legislators are breaking the chains of the extremists and demagogues who have taken the wheel of the Idaho Republican Party and steered it into MAGA-land.
They’re starting to vote sometimes with their conscience, wisdom and reason, not with fear and hate.
And that trend, if it continues, would be good for Idaho.
Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.
