Op-Ed: Rubber, Meet Road

“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.” – Julius Caesar

When one holds a grievance and levies a complaint, they are compelled to take action or risk being nothing more than a whiner. If you are familiar with my columns, you will know that a frequent complaint I’ve registered is the closed nature of the Bannock County Republican Party, but more so, the closed nature of the GOP as a whole. By closed, I am referring to a party that disempowers its most active adherents, the grassroots. I don’t claim to know the reasoning behind these power plays. Still, one can make any number of assumptions, from a desire to concentrate power to a misguided but relevant desire to maintain a narrow association.

Nationwide, the Republican Party faces real threats of ideological intrusion from groups that don’t share conservative values and only seek to destroy their opposition. We saw this recently in Idaho with the rise of center to left-leaning antagonist groups like the North Idaho Republicans and their strange bedfellows, the Gem State Conservatives. Idaho’s May Primary saw these groups pour alleged millions of dollars into statewide elections to regain governing power and tilt the state leftward. They failed miserably.

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In Idaho’s May Primary, strong conservatives gained approximately ten Republican candidacies for the Idaho legislature, including unseating incumbent Senate Pro Tempore Chuck Winder. Similarly, despite alleged millions of dollars spent opposing them, conservatives gained a larger share of county precinct officer seats. These precinct officers select representatives to the state Republican and Democrat Party conventions and drive the agendas of their respective parties at the state level. Most recently, they re-elected the increasingly conservative leadership of the Idaho Republican Party by a decisive 62% to 38% margin in Coeur d’Alene this past weekend. Locally, Bannock County, too, saw a new leadership reorganization.

A few years ago, now County Commissioner John Crowder, frustrated with the nature of local politics, formed a loosely affiliated coalition of conservative-minded individuals called the Bannock County Conservative Coalition. This coalition aims to align like-minded conservatives on local policy and elect vetted conservatives to local office. We meet routinely to debate issues of local concern, break bread, and find opportunities for local volunteer service. Though our opposition often paints us as extremists, our ideological positions remain unmoved from conservatism’s past. That is the very nature of conservatism. We currently count more than four hundred concerned residents of Bannock County amongst our membership and growing.

As mentioned in a prior article, I was a candidate for Precinct Officer in our recent Primary. I lost my precinct race to a well-established fixture in our community and made it a point to seek her out and congratulate her on her win. When dealing with fellow Republicans, a common refrain you’ll hear from me is, “We are not enemies.” Subsequently, I was asked to run for Vice Chair of the Bannock County Republican Party. I was elected to the position by the majority of elected precinct officers. Local businessman Craig Yadon was elected Chair. The opposition in my race proved to be a lovely woman and a great asset in ensuring that our county reorganization followed party rules and went smoothly. If we are to succeed in saving our state and our nation from the march of progressivism, we have to understand who our opposition is and is not.

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So, where do we go from here? Now, the rubber meets the road. My plea for the past few years, and the plea from recently re-elected Chair Dorothy Moon, is to unite the party around common causes.

A frequent complaint of mine has been a neglected and broken website. In my first week, I spent a few days buttoning up the county party’s website and fixing broken links. Shortly, I will work to save the county party the cost by hosting it with the state party as part of the dues we are already paying. There is still much to be done.

Pocatello will host its Independence Day parade in a few weeks, and the county party will have a previously neglected presence. In the coming weeks and months, I will work with Chair Craig Yadon to turn out representation and find opportunities for outreach and fundraising. I don’t view our work as supplanting prior leadership but as taking the baton and running as far as possible to advance conservative causes in Southeast Idaho. I invite all of the conservatives of Bannock County to reach out and get involved in advancing conservatism in Southeast Idaho.

This Op-Ed was submitted by Brian Parsons and originally published on WithdrawConsent.org. Op-Eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of those at the Idaho Dispatch.