Mailbag: Being Infiltrated By RINOs

Alice Rankin: Don’t you know DFO, that Democrats run as Republicans in Southern Idaho, and it’s even beginning in Republican Kootenai County. That’s because they can’t get elected in their own party, so they run in the Republican primary mostly against conservatives. That’s why we can’t get property tax relief or most social issues through the legislature. The majority of the R’s are RINO’s. Especially in the Senate.

DFO: There are some Repubs today who were Dems in a former life: Sheriff Rocky Watson, Prosecutor Bill Douglas and former sheriff Pierce Clegg. And I suspect there are some Repub legislators who have a wild Demo hair in their systems, such as state Sen. John Goedde. What we have here is a division between the two main branches of the local Repub party — red-meat conservative and country-club moderate. They aren’t crazy about each other. Frankly, however, they wouldn’t be able to elect many candidates on their own without the other.