A party confident in its ideas doesn’t fear participation.

In sports, when you lose the big game, the offseason is spent figuring out what went wrong. You watch film. You adjust your strategy. You recruit better players. You might complain about the referees, but eventually you have to look in the mirror and ask why you lost. What you don’t do is change the rules so you can’t lose again. Unfortunately, that seems to be the lesson some leaders in the Idaho Republican Party took away from the 2026 primary elections.

Across Idaho, many candidates backed by the activist wing of the party and supported by party leadership were rejected by Republican voters. Candidates who focused on governing, solving problems and serving their communities prevailed over candidates whose campaigns were built around ideological purity tests, culture wars and biased, manipulated scorecards.

The voters made their decision.

Rather than reflecting on why their preferred candidates lost, though, some party activists are now pushing to fundamentally change how Republican nominees are selected. Their solution isn’t a better message. It isn’t better candidates. It isn’t building a broader coalition of Republicans. Their solution is to reduce the number of Republicans who get to participate.

This week, delegates will gather in Meridian for the Idaho Republican State Convention, where one of the most significant proposals being discussed is replacing Idaho’s primary election system with a caucus. Supporters claim caucuses strengthen the party. The numbers tell a different story.

In 2024, Idaho Republicans experimented with a presidential caucus. Out of approximately 580,000 registered Republicans, fewer than 40,000 participated, less than 7% of the party. By comparison, more than 230,000 Republicans participated in Idaho’s 2020 presidential primary, despite the challenges presented by COVID-19.

The difference isn’t difficult to understand. Primaries are accessible. People can vote early, vote absentee, or vote on election day and then return to work, home, or family responsibilities. Caucuses require participants to appear at a specific place, at a specific time, and often remain there for hours. Many working families, parents, military members, senior citizens, and others simply cannot participate. The result is exactly what advocates of caucuses know it will be: fewer voters. And that raises an important question.

If your goal is to grow the party, why would you want fewer Republicans participating?

The reality is that Idaho voters have repeatedly rejected the activist wing’s attempt to move the Republican Party further from the political mainstream of Idaho conservatism. Idaho Republicans are conservative, but they are also practical. They want leaders who can govern, not just argue. They want results, not constant political and cultural warfare.

Instead of accepting that reality, some activists seem determined to conclude that the problem isn’t their message. The problem is that too many of the “wrong” Republicans are voting.

That is exactly backwards. Don’t change the rules because you didn’t like the outcome. That’s not leadership. That’s being a sore loser.

The Republican Party should be working to bring more Idahoans into the process, not fewer. In my own legislative race, Bingham County turnout increased from 6,939 voters in 2024 to 7,778 voters in 2026 — an increase of more than 12%. That’s what success looks like. More Republicans participating, more Republicans voting and more Republicans having a voice in choosing their leaders is called growing the party.

Shouldn’t that be the goal?

A party that is confident in its ideas welcomes participation. A party that fears participation should ask itself why.

The current leadership of the Idaho Republican Party shouldn’t be focused on changing the rules. They should be focused on changing course. And if Idaho Republicans have repeatedly rejected the party leadership’s preferred radical candidates, maybe it’s not just time for a new game plan.

Maybe it’s time for new coaches.