The NPR Politics Podcast - How Extremist Republicans Have Reframed Politics In Idaho

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Far-right activists and a militia figure are a major force in the state's Republican politics, where even orthodox conservatives like Gov. Brad Little are described by opponents as "too liberal." Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, who has cozied up to white nationalists, is running to unseat him. Now, a group called Take Back Idaho is raising money in an uphill fight to push far-right Republicans out of power. This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national correspondent Kirk Siegler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Holly Grace calling from Modesto, California. I'm currently driving home after a very long week providing behavioral health services to youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. Today I was excited to congratulate four of our young adults as they move from our low barrier shelter into transitional housing. This podcast was recorded at 1219 p.m. Eastern on Monday, April 11th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, enjoy the show. Wow, she's doing really good work. That's amazing and important work, really.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today we've got NPR's Kirk Siegler with us, who covers many, many things for NPR, including politics in the Northwest. Hey, Kirk. Hey, guys. So you have some new reporting out of your home state of Idaho, where a group of more centrist Republicans are trying to defeat a number of far-right extremist candidates on the ballot in this year's midterms. So let's just take a step back. Could you talk about what the environment has been like in Idaho that has allowed some more extremist candidates to even get a foothold

in state politics? Well, I think, yeah, historically, the listeners will know that Idaho has always been associated with extremism, political extremes. You know, just think back in recent-ish times to the 1990s, the standoff at Ruby Ridge and other militias in the northern panhandle and white supremacist groups and Aryan Nations groups. But I think what's new is these extremes have lately entered the actual Republican Party and are in elected positions. They're on school boards. They're even on library boards, particularly in the northern panhandle of the state. And I would say this really started happening in earnest after the Trump election and even more so right around the beginning of the pandemic. You have a lieutenant governor in the state that is openly touting her ties to the Idaho 3% militias. You have a number of other candidates for office who have militia ties and some legislators in the statehouse at the moment who are aligned directly with these

far-right groups. Can we be clear, though, when we talk about extremists? Because that's a pretty big label to toss around in politics. When we're talking about extremists in this case of these Idaho races, is it people who have support or have flirted with support with white supremacist groups? You mentioned militias, sort of anti-democratic small d sort of forces. When you're saying extremists, what do you mean? Well, in particular, the Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeehan, who made national headlines repeatedly for issuing executive orders when the governor of Idaho left the state. And it's important distinction here. These are two independently elected offices. McGeehan just caught controversy for attending AFPAC, the America First Political

Action Committee. Many people said she was cozying up to white nationalists. Then you also have a couple of candidates who were directly involved and arrested for their roles in Western armed standoffs involving the Bundy family. Right. And Eamon Bundy is running for governor in Idaho. He's no longer in the Republican primary. He's running as an independent. He, of course, led an armed standoff against federal agents in a bird refuge in Oregon. But Kirk, who are the moderate forces who you found who are pushing back against the extremist elements of the party there? Well, yeah, here's where things get interesting. Even in a state like Idaho, there is a fairly organized effort to push back against this. And in particular, the story that we recently focused on,

or the group that we recently focused on in my reporting is a political action group called Take Back Idaho. Now, this is a group of very prominent former Republican elected leaders, including a Supreme Court justice or state Supreme Court justice, and the state speaker of the house, very prominent Republicans in the 80s, 90s, even into the aughts. And also a basically what I would say kind of run of the mill classic, even if stereotypical, Western conservatives from rural places, ranchers. A lot of ag interests are in this group. They formed a PAC to fight back against what they call is the encroaching extremism, the focus on culture wars, when a state like Idaho, just like many others, faces many pressing issues with education

funding, they say, and infrastructure, but yet the entire party seems to be focused on these issues that they say don't really actually affect a lot of Idahoans. Well, what I think is so interesting about this, and you talk about some of this in your reporting, is that the incumbent governor there, Brad Little, you know, by many standard definitions, he would still be considered a very conservative politician. And he's being attacked from the right for not being conservative enough. Right. This is the governor of Idaho is a Brad Little. He just signed a Texas style abortion bill. And but, you know, almost like puzzlingly, I had people in this recent reporting trip tell me that

he was a liberal. So that's, I think, tells you kind of where the Republican base of the party is nationwide. And one of the reasons they'll say that is that Governor Little, unlike a couple of Republican governors further to the right, both here in the West and around the country. He refused to, during the pandemic, ban all mask wearing. He allowed local control, allowed local jurisdictions to implement mask ordinances. And in fact, he recently vetoed a bill that would have banned all private employers from requiring vaccines. Because he hasn't fallen completely in line, I'd say, with the sort of Tea Party extremes of the Republican Party, he in Idaho, considering from the base, is branded as a rhino, a Republican in name only.

Domenico, we've seen this tension playing out between wings of the Republican Party for a long time now. We've had this conversation on the podcast many, many times. Do you think our definition of what's moderate and what's conservative? I mean, I always am really cautious now in putting these labels out there because the definition of a moderate today is very different than it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. I mean, has the center point of the Republican Party just naturally shifted more to the right? Well, it definitely has. And it's been pulled there, you know, starting with Sarah Palin in 2009, through the Tea Party that rose up in opposition to President Obama, and then through the, you know, win by former President Trump, the party has definitely been pulled. And I don't think it's in a moderate to conservative, you know, spectrum as far as how strongly you prefer tax cuts, or anything, or whether or not, right, or whether you're against abortion rights, for example, which have always been sort of litmus test conservative issues. This is what we're talking what we're talking about moderate, quote, unquote. I think it's really about moderation and about tone and about how you

present yourself publicly, the kind of rhetoric that you use, the kind of extreme positions you might take. And one of the litmus tests that former President Trump has created now has been about election denial. And, you know, Brad Little, the governor of Idaho, is somebody who sort of himself has even found himself having to sort of flirt with that idea, backing this lawsuit, you know, after the 2020 election to protect the sanctity of the voting processes, even though he said that the vote in Idaho was safe and secure, and he expects the same of other states. They're trying to walk this line when you have other candidates who are being far more full-throated in this post-Trump era. All right, let's take a quick break, and we'll talk more about this in a second. And we're back, and we've been talking about Kirk's reporting out of Idaho. And one other point that you made in your story that I think is worth talking about here is that in this sort of struggle between these moderating forces and these more extreme forces, there aren't a lot of real champions within the party at the top for these moderating forces. A lot of these elected officials speaking out are former elected officials. A lot of them are from the Bush era, which was like another lifetime ago politically.

So what does that tell you all about where the energy is right now behind these competing movements? Well, I think it tells you what the effort to moderate the Republican Party, take back Idaho and other groups are up against. And I also think it tells you that they probably don't stand much of a chance in succeeding, at least initially. This primary in Idaho, one of the reasons we're talking about it so much nationally is it is seen as a test for just how far to the right the Republican Party can be pulled. And like I mentioned, you have former state legislators, a former state Supreme Court justice. You don't have any current Republican officeholders in Idaho speaking out against this. I grew up in Montana, western Montana next door, where in the 90s when I was in high school, Governor Mark Roscoe was, by today's standards, would be certainly considered a moderate Republican. He was very popular. And I spoke to him for this piece, and he pointed out the same thing, that basically until we get current Republican elected leaders actually speaking and trying to change things other than just the odd handful or the senator who's retiring, then this movement certainly faces big challenges.

But Roscoe told me that the far-right leaders of the party today are a threat to democracy. There's really a huge, great middle of America that is concerned about us as a republic falling apart. But you're not seeing a lot of people speaking out about this. And I think that tells you that the base is really attuned and interested in the populist streak of the party that we're seeing all around the country. So I think that this effort to try to moderate the party, be it in Idaho or elsewhere, at least right now, is a tall order. Dominico, I think about this in terms of leaders of the party. I mean, you look at Kevin McCarthy, who may well be the next Speaker of the House, who

helped lead the ousting of Liz Cheney from Republican leadership over her advocacy against the former president's actions on January 6th. You have Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who may well be Majority Leader again, saying on January 6th, he condemned Donald Trump, he blamed Donald Trump for the actions, but just last week said if he's the nominee in 2024, he'll support him and he'll work for him. These are very conflicting messages from the very, very top of the party in Washington. They don't really seem to be embracing the causes that's happening on some of these state level parties.

Well, the consistency is power. You know, they look at Trump, they look at the base, they realize that, well, maybe they thought January 6 would be more of a red line for a lot of people. And guess what, for some it was, but for many, it hasn't been because clearly Trump is still a major player. He's somebody who, you know, is right now the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2024. He continues to flirt with that as an idea. You know, some would argue he's lost some of his grip on the party, but not if you look at the behavior of a lot of the candidates for Senate races across the country, where a lot of them are really trying to curry favor with the former president to get his endorsement to curry favor with the base. You know, in states like Idaho, the primary is what matters. Idaho's

a red state. Whoever wins the primary is almost certainly going to win in November. But that's not true everywhere, right, Domenico? I mean, you've been looking at the competitive races for the Senate this year. And then there are cases where if a more extreme candidate wins the primary, they could cause their party a whole lot of trouble in November. That is true. I mean, if you look at a state like Ohio, for example, where a candidate like Josh Mandel, you know, who the former state treasurer is very controversial, you know, has really moved more toward the right than where he'd even been previously, and he'd been pretty far right. You think about a place like Nevada out west, you know, Adam Laxalt, who is a former attorney general

there, he was very much on board the MAGA train, very pro-Trump, led his state party coalition there, and has been a big election denier, boosting Trump's election lie. And that is a thread that we've seen throughout the country. My question, though, is going to be whether or not those things wind up derailing candidates. In particular, I look at the top Senate race that's most likely to flip in my analysis, and that's Pennsylvania, where you very well may see the most money spent of any state there. You've got Dr. Oz running and who just got Trump's endorsement over the weekend. And then meanwhile, you have this business guy, financier, hedge fund manager in David McCormick, who's really gone through this transformation

to really appeal to the MAGA base, even putting out an ad during the Super Bowl with Let's Go Brandon chants in the background, which is intended to be a slight toward President Biden and people who worked for him looking at this saying, what is happening here? So you wonder with the amount of money that's going to be spent in ads from Democratic outside super PACs really trying to tie these candidates to Trump and January 6th, if it's going to have an effect where it takes them down a couple points and winds up costing Republicans, if not the Senate, a few seats. All right, Kirk, as always, thanks for coming on the pod. Good to talk to you. Sure thing. Glad to be here. And that's it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.