Half of my friends want to know why Idaho’s Governor Brad Little went bonkers and now wants to subsidize private religious schools with tax money.
The other half chided the same man for not supporting “school choice,” not allowing state education dollars to “follow the child” to a parent’s choice of learning environment. That is, he didn’t until this year.
But it’s not just school choice on which Governor Little appears to be “moving right.” The same governor who condemned “hate speech” against LGBTQ (note the “T”), now crusades to tell transgender individuals they cannot compete in sports.
The Gem County businessman and rancher who broke ranks with the ag community to support adequate local school budgets now signs most tax cuts that reach his desk.
But I doubt it is the mind of Governor Little that changed. What is different is the tone and tenor of political debate.
Governor Little is notoriously “not shallow.” He often paused heated debates asking a simple question like, “But did we think about these side-effects, these unintended consequences?”
Initially this reputation for thoughtfulness was a strength. Who could foretell that Idaho, nay America, would come to disdain nuance? The wisdom and deep insight of Independence Hall has yielded to a system where TikTok memes and Facebook slogans rule and where “likes” on social media overrule and overwhelm a full-page newspaper editorial.
Confirmation bias used to be a weakness, a flaw in reasoning and logic, to be avoided by seeking out and attempting to put yourself in your opponent’s shoes. Now confirmation bias is the horse everyone rides.
For the Governor that means big decisions are always a dilemma. “Do I hold out for a proposal that is right for 70 or 80 percent of Idaho? Or do I yield to the prevailing wind, and if 51% favor a particular cause, get in front of it and craft a proposal tenuously endorsable?”
Increasingly, the Governor is choosing the latter. And who can blame him?
He attempted to point out flaws in a bill that allowed library employees to be sued if an objectionable book was outside the new mandatory “adult book section.” Did his empathy for innocent library workers garner praise? No. He was censured by his own state Republican Party.
Switching to run as a Democrat is no answer. On the big issues, they are just wrong. Public schools throughout Idaho aren’t designed (and never were) for the diverse educational needs of modern parents. Private educational tools need to be accessible.
The LGBTQ community overplayed “acceptance of diversity.” Biologically questionable gender may need accommodation, but psychologically confused gender is, at least for now, not understood to the point of reversing the whole reason for Title IX women-only sports.
Broadbrush and catch-all regulation is lazy. Rules can be written clearly and narrowly to the benefit of everyone.
And the federal government is facing a looming crisis where debt service interest alone will soon crowd out all other priorities.
So Governor Little had to become a new MAGA champion: booting men from women’s sports, praising Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, winning kudos from President Trump for cutting Idaho’s red tape and sending guardsmen to the border with Mexico.
It was a difficult dilemma — be immaculately right and always lose or be mostly right and win.
His detractors should show some empathy. You don’t have to be a MAGA fan to recognize that the Governor’s choices are the only way to effectively lead in the new MAGA world.
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