What’s the Matter with Idaho?
Idaho is a canary in the coal mine for the reactionary shift in the Republican Party. Idaho has been on the cutting edge of far right extremism since at least the Ruby Ridge incident and what used to be relegated to an oddity of North Idaho has become the driving ideology of the Republican Party. The Idaho Republican Party is as extreme as they come and increasingly more in touch with the Republican base than figures within the broader Republican party who want to chart a more moderate course.
Take for example recent legislation passed in the state of Idaho. There is House Bill 186 which legalized death by firing squad to speed up executions on Idaho’s death row. Idaho became one of two states to pass a ban on gender affirming care for trans minors, part and parcel of the broader Republican attack on trans people. Idaho also attempted to criminalize people providing MRNA vaccines like those used to fight COVID. And finally Idaho has passed a bill trying to extend the reach of its laws and punish people for seeking abortions outside of the state in a newly invented crime dubbed “abortion trafficking.”
In a different era these efforts may have seemed like political oddities. Something more akin to the Aryan Nation marching in downtown Coeur d’Alene Idaho or the aforementioned Ruby Ridge incident, something that happens in little old backwater conservative Idaho, not the rest of the country where the politics are presumably more reasonable. However, Idaho is no longer the anomaly it used to be and is instead pushing the envelope in ways that spread far and wide across the party.
Increasingly what happens in Idaho and states like it, actions taken by state legislatures are indicative of the broader Republican Party and their aims. An Idaho politician once said to the co-founder of Millennial Review that Roe v. Wade broke the state’s politics and cemented Republican one party rule. Abortion is a very animating issue in Idaho and has been for a long time. That used to be an oddity at the extreme conservative fringe of the party. However it became the north star of the conservative legal movement and overturning Roe became the litmus test by which all Republican judges and increasingly politicians are judged.
After Roe was overturned it didn’t take long for Republican politicians to support a federal abortion ban. That follows decades of so-called moderate Republicans like John Kasich proving they are just as reactionary as their colleagues by enacting ever more draconian bans on the state level. Some 24 states currently have enacted a ban of some sort post-Roe and those bans are getting increasingly close to outright and are incredibly punitive. As stated earlier Idaho has followed up a trigger law with the newly developed crime of “abortion trafficking” which aims to punish people for helping minors seek abortion care out of state.
It’s just a matter of time before bills like Idaho’s “abortion trafficking” bill are challenged and work the way through the courts. Liberals seem to hope this will be an opportunity for the court to draw a line in the sand and show the law is still a bulwark against the reactionary turn in the Republican Party. More likely it will be an opportunity for the courts to co-sign that turn and legitimize it further. Samuel Alito and company knew overturning Roe would lead to legislative efforts like that underway in Idaho and dozens of other states. The cruelty is the point and as states like Idaho push the envelope even further, the courts will likely be happy to oblige.
What happens in Idaho is a logical extension of Republican Party politics. State legislatures are far more extreme than their federal counterparts but that dynamic is quickly changing as congressional Republicans and those running in the Republican primary take their cues from the most extreme elements of the party. This creates a feedback loop where the party as a whole has gotten more and more extreme at the behest of a minority of the party that is increasingly unhinged. On one hand this dynamic led to the rise of Donald Trump and showed it can fundamentally alter the trajectory of the United States. On the other hand it proved tiresome and ineffective in 2020 and has grown a divide between right wing ideologues and the rest of the country.
Idaho (and really about 20 other states) show that this growing divide hasn’t slowed the rightward shift within the party. In fact for the true faithful it has doubled their resolve and led to the legislative acts described above, “abortion trafficking,” bringing back the firing squad, and bans on all aspects of trans life just to name a few. This is the cruelty that the Republican party craves, from the top down, and there are plenty of people willing to deliver it.