The Half Way Insurgency

Butch Otter wants Dean Sorensen as Chairman of the State Republican Party. He also wants closed primaries revisited so that once again the primaries can open so that we have more numbers of people voting (even if they aren’t Republicans). Conservatives aim to stop him at the State Convention by defending the closed primary and putting their choice in as Chairman.

Butch Otter is likely to go 1-for-2 on this route. It really is unprecedented what happened at the 2008 convention with Otter’s choice for Chairman, Kirk Sullivan, being denied re-election. There is not near the level of angst now that many of the grassroots commands have been acted on. Expect Dean Sorensen to win and party activists to rue the day it happened. I hope conservative enjoyed having platform statements from candidates because I’d bet money that Chairman Sorensen and his new Executive Director won’t be sending them out.

On the other hand, Otter’s efforts to reopen the closed primary are going to be probably be given a cold shoulder by delegates. Having gone through years of this debate, only the die hards of the open primary are ready to go back through it. If he cared about party unity, he’d drop the idea in the name of consensus and unity.

Here’s the problem. Butch Otter is not interested in bringing grassroots and establishment to harmony. There’s one thing he wants from grassroots Republicans.

Complete submission to his will.

It’s Governor Otter’s way or the highway, that’s the way Otter has tried to have things run in the GOP. This is why he’s putting up a Sorensen for Party Chairman. If he cared about bringing the party together, he would offer a candidate who would meet the approval of the conservative wing, but Otter wants total submission. And more likely than not, his choice as GOP chairman will take that approach.

There is more than enough reason to throw out the state’s existing political establishment. I was on the floor at the 2008 Convention as Butch Otter’s machine wanted to deny secret ballot elections for Party offices. With many delegates state employees, at the very least, there was an implied threat of political reprisals. When Raul Labrador stood to speak, members of the party establishment jeered like they were New York political machine thugs.

When Butch Otter didn’t get his way, he through a tantrum. He refused to raise funds to help support Bill Sali’s re-election campaign until it was too late in the process and was shedding no tears over the seat going to the Democrats.

We also saw the case of Chris Pentico, where the Otter Administration prosecuted a grassroots conservative activist.

Otter represents a political establishment that at its core is about old political families who believe, like the Aristocracy of old, that their power is secured by their birthright and that it is the duty of the common folk to bow to their will.

Yet, conservatives refused to do anything to seriously challenge this establishment in 2010. Otter was opposed for Governor by four candidates whose campaigns were more doomed from the start than the Edmund Fitzgerald.  Only token opposition was made to Brad Little who got to become the state’s new Crown Prince Lieutenant Governor.

Now I note in the Statesman article, Region 2 Chairwoman Lee Ann Callear says:

“We support the governor, but we’re not going to be bullied,” she said. “We want the party run from the grass roots up, not the top down. I don’t understand why he has to have his person. To me, a guy that’s finally the governor of Idaho — that’s not enough?”

The problem is that the Governor didn’t learn his lesson after 2008 and decide to submit to grassroots leadership. He threw a tantrum and there was no consequence  for this. By continuing to “support the Governor,” conservatives are enabling to continue the same behavior because he’s not going to change.

One of the challenges is that Otter hasn’t been all bad: he held the line on taxes during the downturn, he provided some critical support to Tom Luna on education reform, and he’s made some good legislative appointments.  And some people like Otter for the conservative principles he used to stand for and the conservative rhetoric he can still whip out on the appropriate occasion. The problem is that he represents a political establishment that’s far more interested in rewarding its allies than it is bringing about the type of things conservatives care about in terms of school choice, tax reform, and more freedom and as long as Otter and the monied establishment is in power.

Emerson Observed, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” The idea politically is that you must defeat your political opponent totally when you go after him, not just give him a black eye and allow him to stay in office, because if you do that, he’s going to strike. That’s exactly what conservatives have tried to do and this is where we’re at. And the longer we keep this constant bifurcated approach to Otter and the establishment up, the longer the party’s going to be divided.

Either conservatives need to bow to Otter as the power who must be obeyed or they need to resolve to not only elect a conservative chairman, but to offer a serious alternative to Otter  and Little in the 2014 elections.

Read more at Adam’s Blog