Now he’s a target, hopeful asserts

BOISE – A defiant Rex Rammell, still refusing to apologize Tuesday for his joking remarks about buying hunting tags to shoot President Barack Obama, accused top Idaho Republican leaders of conspiring to sabotage his run for governor by condemning his remarks.

“They’re trying to ruin my run to be the governor,” Rammell said at a press conference across from the state Capitol.

At a Republican barbecue in Twin Falls last week, during a discussion about wolf hunting tags, a woman in the audience shouted, “Obama tags,” and Rammell responded, “The Obama tags? We’d buy some of those.”

Widely reported, his remark prompted a storm of criticism from GOP leaders at home, as well as talk across the nation.

Rammell is from Rexburg, the eastern Idaho town where elementary schoolchildren riding home on a school bus after last year’s election chanted, “Assassinate Obama,” prompting statewide consternation and a public apology from the mayor.

“There’s an underlying animosity to Obama and his policies,” Rammell said.

“I think it comes out in these comments.”

But, he said, “I meant nothing by it. … I wasn’t serious, and it didn’t even start with me. It would’ve been rude for me to condemn the lady for saying it. This country needs to lighten up.”

Rammell launched his own attacks against top Idaho GOP leaders and officeholders, accusing Gov. Butch Otter of “betraying the conservative movement” and calling his appointment of popular GOP state Sen. Brad Little as the state’s lieutenant governor “unforgivable.”

Rammell criticized Congressman Mike Simpson for “literally selling Idaho and America down the road” through votes in Congress, and he bashed former Idaho Gov. Phil Batt, who also is a former state GOP chairman, for “idly standing by while the federal government was dropping wolves on our big game herds in 1995.”

He said, “I will apologize for my comments when you apologize for all the pain and suffering you have caused Idaho.”

Norm Semanko, chairman of the Idaho Republican Party, issued a statement calling Rammell’s criticisms of state GOP leaders “a ridiculous and desperate publicity stunt.” He said, “I call upon Rex Rammell to take responsibility for his actions and apologize for his remarks as Rammell’s comments do not reflect the views of Idaho Republicans.”

Rammell is a veterinarian and former elk rancher with a grudge against former Idaho Gov. Jim Risch, now a U.S. senator, for ordering his escaped farmed elk shot to avoid possible harm to Idaho’s wild elk herds. Risch, like the rest of Idaho’s congressional delegation, has strongly condemned Rammell’s remarks about hunting the president.

“I’ll tell you the main reason that I won’t apologize, is because of the over-the-top comments by the GOP leaders,” Rammell said. “I am not sorry for saying the comment – I am sorry that some people took it incorrectly.”

Rammell said he doesn’t intend to assassinate the president. “I was just being polite to that lady,” he said.

Two residents, who decided separately to show up, attended Rammell’s press conference, but he refused to take any questions from them. “I’m an Idaho resident who’s a lifelong Republican, who finds Mr. Rammell to be an embarrassment,” said one, Brad Cozzens, of Eagle.

“I don’t see how anyone can take a joke about licensing the assassination of the president in any manner except highly offensive,” Cozzens said. “I don’t like Obama much, and I find it highly offensive.”