Idaho Republicans Split Into Warring Factions (Opinion)

Think politics is a blood sport in the Magic Valley?  Things locally are downright gentlemanly compared with some areas of the Idaho Panhandle.

A lengthy piece at Buzzfeed is the latest national attention focused on the Republican Party’s various factions in Idaho.  In Kootenai County, there has been a complete inversion of the GOP Committee.

Outsiders in national media treat the changes like a newly discovered species. Last week, an Israeli writer penned a column for the Wall Street Journal and explained the conservative movement was never historically monolithic.  In fact, it united for the Cold War and then again split when the Soviet threat faded.

What you’re seeing in Northern Idaho is the economic nationalism of what was known as “classical liberalism”, which wasn’t liberal, but conservative.

It’s embodied nationally today in the person of Steve Bannon and alive and well in parts of the Intermountain West, the Great Lakes and the Deep South.