A staggering pile of money went up in a bonfire on Tuesday. Political power, grown over years and carefully cultivated, evaporated overnight. This happened to Idaho’s “Gang of Eight.”
Based on preliminary “uncanvassed” results in Idaho’s 105 legislative races, the Legislature’s Gang of Eight will soon become a Gang of Three, with five members losing the Republican nomination and any chance at return to the Idaho Legislature.
Idaho’s Gang of Eight proclaimed that they “stand up for the people, not the political class . . . fight runaway spending, federal strings, and backroom deals.” They proudly claim affiliation with the national State Freedom Caucus Network, an important part of their “identity,” separating them from other unaffiliated “Freedom Caucus” groups.
The national Network is led by DC insider Andrew Roth, a veteran trench warrior and former Executive Director of the combative Club for Growth Foundation. Roth prides himself on leading the national effort to train Republicans on how to fight Republicans.
Roth suffers from chronic “small world view” syndrome. Unable to grasp and articulate a clear conservative vision to combat the liberal answer to everything, grow government, his myopia brings into focus only what is closest to him: his Republican allies. But when those allies don’t march to simplistic dogma, they become the enemy and must be destroyed . . . leaving the Democrats to do what they do, grow government.
The Gang of Eight emulates that small world view, attacking fellow Republicans, demonizing Republican-leaning businesses and voter bases, attacking perceived radical leftists like the Idaho Farm Bureau and the FFA.
Nationwide, Network members are known as “thorns in the side” of Republican legislative leaders. In only one state have they grown to elect their own leadership, Wyoming, where, like all winning trench warriors, they are the establishment but have no clue how to actually lead.
The Network’s myopia is compounded by their misunderstanding of the very thing they stand for: “freedom.” They view it like a piece of real estate, a homestead, or an island. “If we could just return to freedom?” they ask.
But that is not how America’s founders viewed freedom. It wasn’t a place... it was a means of transport. It wasn’t where we stop and rest. It was how we move and better our lives.
Here is an example from my work in Congress. Senator Reid of Nevada wanted to ban all metallic lead in commerce. Curtain manufacturers countered that lead weights were needed to keep curtains hanging neatly and straight. Reid offered to write into his bill a $500,000 grant to have the Environmental Protection Agency research alternatives to lead weights in curtains.
Senator Symms of Idaho, a freedom fighter to his core, suggested an alternative: how about streamlining EPA permitting for any manufacturer who, on their own, develops a substitute for lead? His solution wasn’t designed to “get us all to the island of ‘freedom’” (a place not likely to even have an “EPA”). Instead, his solution used freedom to solve the problem of children eating curtain weights and getting lead poisoning.
And that is what the Gang of Eight missed. They criticized Republicans for not remaining on their island... when they should have been offering freedom-based solutions to help us all eat, house, clothe, educate and live healthy no matter where we plant our feet.
If I were more of a cynical jerk, I could suggest finding disgruntled, ambitious-but-failing Democrats, convince them their obstacle is the Democrat “establishment,” and fund them to train woke militant candidates who attack any and all Democrats not residing on the “social justice island.” Take down every Democrat who misgenders or fails to repent of privilege!
But such conniving and sinister sabotage is not consistent with the enlightened open and honest deliberation that America’s Founders knew to be essential to a free society.
And that is why the Gang of Eight rightly lost.