The Idaho Republican Party today launched a big round of robo-calls in the 1st Congressional District featuring a recorded message from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich asking voters to send Republican Raul Labrador to Congress to help build a GOP majority there. "I'd rather not say the exact number, but it was a pretty substantial amount of homes we called, all today," said Jonathan Parker, Idaho GOP executive director. He said the idea of using Gingrich, who became speaker in 1995, was to hearken back to the 1994 Republican electoral sweep he helped lead. "I think there's a lot of parallels between 2010 and 1994," Parker said.

Parker spoke from the Idaho Republican Bus Tour, which kicked off this week and this afternoon was rolling out of Cascade with candidates aboard including Gov. Butch Otter, Lt. Gov. Brad Little, Labrador, Tom Luna and Ben Ysursa. "It's a great party unity event," Parker said of the bus tour, which hits southern and eastern Idaho this week, and heads to North Idaho next week.