North Idaho Republican fighting back against extremists in party. We support her | Opinion

Idaho Rep. Lori McCann, a Republican from Lewiston, is fighting back against the far right fringe of her party after she was censured by the Latah County Republican Central Committee.

“It’s a bigger issue than just me and Latah County,” McCann told the Statesman’s Nicole Blanchard in an interview. “It’s about Idaho GOP politics and what’s going on in our entire state. There’s a lot of mistreatment against some real good legislators who are more in the middle or are trying to work with all the Republicans.”

As Blanchard notes, McCann replaced Aaron von Ehlinger, a state representative who raped a statehouse volunteer.

It’s incredible — but telling — that the Idaho Republican Party spends more time chastising someone like McCann than they ever did condemning a convicted rapist like von Ehlinger.

Just so we’re clear, when we talk about “far-right extremists,” we’re talking about those who, while they think they’re “defending the Constitution,” are actually infringing on the rights of American citizens by taking away their access to medical care, in the cases of women seeking an abortion — even in cases of rape, incest and danger to the health of the mother — and transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care.

Far-right extremism is imposing government will in between a citizen and their medical provider in making health care decisions.

By “far-right extremists,” we’re talking about those who seek to infringe on First Amendment rights by banning library books and subjecting librarians and library districts to lawsuits from far-right extremists who don’t like that a book has a gay character in it.

We’re talking about those who make up terms like “critical social justice” and create myths about indoctrination and a “homosexual agenda” in an attempt to vilify public education, calling public schools “government indoctrination camps.” They seek to defund higher education and public schools and redirect taxpayer money toward private schools through vouchers.

When we talk about far-right extremism, we’re talking about people who want to disenfranchise voters and make it more difficult to vote because they got duped by a charlatan telling them an election was rigged, without any evidence or proof.

In a twist of irony, these far-right extremists decry the label while at the same time labeling anything they disagree with as being “communist.”

When did public health, public education, public libraries and protecting the rights of all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, become “communist”? Do they even know what communism is?

The far right’s views would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous.

McCann, along with other sane, reasonable Republicans, such as Rep. Matt Bundy, of Mountain Home; Rep. Mark Sauter, of Sandpoint; and Rep. Julie Yamamoto, of Caldwell, has been censured by their party for taking reasonable positions on some of these issues.

These censures by “central committees” smack of the Soviet politburo, where disloyalty to the party could get you a spot on the firing line.

“Whereas, the special investigating committee held meetings between May 1, 2023 and June 21, 2023, met with and received comments from Representative Lori McCann about her voting record,” reads the central committee’s resolution.

This is the kind of nonsense we can expect from the cranks and crackpots who have taken over the Idaho Republican Party.

This editorial board doesn’t agree with all of McCann’s votes, and we were especially disappointed last session when she voted in favor of a government ban on gender-affirming health care for transgender youth.

But really what’s at issue here is the Idaho Republican Party’s move to the far right through the control of the party machine by a small ideological minority within the party. These censures are a way to either force good legislators like McCann, Bundy, Yamamoto and Sauter to fall in line and simply do the bidding of these fringe actors, even when it’s against their better judgment and beliefs, or use the censures against them in a closed Republican primary so that they can install more far-right candidates, as we’ve seen in recent years, such as Sen. Tammy Nichols, Scott Herndon, Brian Lenney and Chris Trakel.

If anything, voters can use these censures as a guide to vote for the candidates who get censured.

A censure from a Republican central committee should be worn as a badge of honor, a sign that censured legislators are reasonable and measured. And most of all, they can think for themselves.

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.