I’ve read a lot of opinions on the question of whether Raul Labrador should run for Governor. Some have said that Labrador running for Governor would be harmful and that he should stay in the U.S. House.

Let me say that first off, if Raul Labrador runs for Governor, I will be behind him 150%. The question of whether he should run is going to be up to him and will depend on where he can make the most difference?

Being in the House of Representatives is an often difficult job particularly when the House as a whole has such weak-kneed and fiscally liberal folks as Mike Simpson in it. It’s dysfunctional and any conservative gains are going to be stymied by a Democratic President and Senate. This will be the case for at least the next four years.

In Idaho on the other hand, Raul Labrador would have a huge Republican contingent in the legislature, and the ability to dramatically impact state policy on issues such as taxes, size of government, and reform of education.

I have to wonder if people who think Raul Labrador should stay in Washington DC have fallen into the trap of thinking what goes on in Washington is far more important that what is happening at our State Capitol. It’s not so.

Republicans have held the Governor’s Mansion in our state for going on 20 years, with all but Jim Risch’s six month tenure seeing the Governor’s mansion occupied by hard-core party establishment guys like Phil Batt, Dirk Kempthorne, and Butch Otter. The question Idaho Conservatives is, Are we better off now than we were twenty years ago?

Other than getting some pro-life legislation passed, how different would our state be if we’d been led to that most endangered of political dinosaurs, the Idaho Moderate Democrat leading our state with Republican legislatures we have had. Given the size of the GOP majorities, we ought to have made serious changes to our state, we ought to be a model of wise and prudent tax policy, of innovative limited government.

Instead, what do we have? We have an income tax code that’s a refugee from the progressive era.  A sales tax that plays so many favorites and picks so many winners and losers that it excludes more sales than it taxes. We have an education system that is in desperate need of reform, and a sprawling state government that we didn’t use the late fiscal shortfalls as a chance to fix.

The reason for this is that we have a state leadership that views power as an end.  Conservatives need to change the state executive desperately but have shown very little competence in doing so.

In 2010, the best conservatives could come up with was Rex Rammell.  If conservatives don’t plan to win the Governorship in 2014, they’ll easily lose it with another lackluster candidate.

To be clear, Raul Labrador is not the only candidate who would make a fine Governor. I’ve often thought the same of Senators Russ Fulcher and Marv Hagedorn. However, what makes Raul Labrador such an interesting potential candidate is that he has the name recognition and fundraising base to easily run this campaign while others will have to work to get that statewide recognition.

While I’d hate to lose Raul Labrador’s legislative capabilities in Washington, our state needs Conservative leadership in the governor’s office that’ll make up for the past twenty wasted stagnant years. So, if Raul Labrador thinks he can makes a difference as Governor, I hope he runs.

If not, I hope conservatives can offer a serious alternative to a continuation of the status quo of Batt-Kempthorne-Otter.

    

Across the West, Sheriffs have been pledging not to seize firearms. Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney sounds an entirely different tone in a Reader’s View in the Idaho Statesman. He writes:

I did not swear to uphold just part of the Constitution. Our Constitution includes the right to keep and bear arms, but it also includes the “supremacy clause” that says that every state shall abide by the laws passed by our Congress.

So, despite the fact that I personally oppose some of the gun control measures currently under consideration, my oath requires me to uphold the laws that are passed by our federal and state representatives…

I fear that passions have led people into a rally of mistruth. It is time we truly respect the Constitution and our system of justice. Regardless of your personal opinion on the Second Amendment, embrace everyone’s liberty and use our well-established process to pass laws and contest them.

    

Some quick Idaho notes:

• I’m on board if Congressman Raul Labrador runs for governor. We’ve had a Republican Governor in Idaho for 20 years but you wouldn’t know it looking at the state of our state’s finances, its tax code, or its education system.  We ought to be one of the most innovative conservative states in the nation. Instead, we have a Governor who is willing to rest on his laurels and propose insignificant bills that due nothing to address our state’s fundamental tax and fiscal problems which sees our state so often running behind. I think Raul Labrador would offer Idaho a new generation of leadership. Though if he doesn’t run, I hope some conservative will actually offer an alternative to Otter. If Otter is re-elected expect to accomplishment the name of his running mate-little. And if conservatives choose to sit idly by and let Otter cruise to another term, they’re choosing the slow and steady decline of our stat.e
• Idaho Reporter notes Butch Otter has gone from proposing eliminating funding for IPTV to offering an increase a budge. Of course Otter was for eliminating in 2010 when he was facing a primary and needed to throw a bone to conservative voters. Though perhaps, its a case of “once bitten twice shy.” I don’t think the way that Senator Sheryl Nuxoll framed the issue helped the cause of reducing it, “Private enterprise is where innovation comes from. I believe the private sector could fulfill the niche that Idaho Public Television currently fulfills.” Laudable sentiments but that turns the debate into an existence over IPTV and state funding or no, it won’t go away. They’ll run an extra telethon or so, but it won’t go away.  There are people who like classical music on the radio or Masterpiece Theater who get upset when you threaten their public broadcasting. This debate shouldn’t be about “ending public television” but ending subsidies for public television. The reason the left is gung ho about government funding is that they believe the government should be funding this in toto as an ideological commitment. That’s the argument you have to take down. Going to war with Public TV as a concept is a bad idea.
• Count me as a “yes” for making it harder for initiatives and referenda to qualify for the ballot. I’ve become less a fan of direct democracy over time. As someone who tries to cast informed voters and really studies issues, I love the idea of  direct democracy. The reality is though that our founders had good reason for making our country a Republic. If you look at California and how its problems have resulted (to some extent) from a bevy of ballot initiatives that often run at cross-purposes from one another.  The California ballot is unruly with its endless pages of initiatives.  Few people are going to realistically take the time to study every little issue on a very lengthy ballot. That’s why our founders gave us a republican form of system where we the people designate representatives to act on our behalf. Now, if we have representatives who refuse to pass good laws or pass bad ones, we don’t need a referendum, we need new representatives.
• Finally, I’ve never before announced that an issue will be on the Idaho Conservative scorecard, but let me go ahead and make an exception. Health Care Exchanges will be on the scorecard and a vote against the Health Care Exchanges will be scored a conservative vote.

    

From the Idaho Statesman:

Owyhee Prosecutor Doug Emory said Thursday he would not seek the death penalty against Herrera, who could still be sent to prison for life, without parole, if found guilty of first degree murder.

An Owyhee County grand jury found late last year that Herrera, “with the intentional application of torture,” intentionally inflicted “extreme and prolonged pain,” by “inflicting repeated acts of blunt force trauma upon (Nakita) by means of physical force … emotional abuse, and/or lack of physical and/or medical care, which caused bruising, pain, burns, broken bones, and injuries,” that led to the toddler’s death on Aug. 16.

You know some people think Idaho is intolerant. Let me suggest that we’re way too tolerant and lax on real evil. I’m not an advocate of willy nilly application of the death penalty, but if there’s a case where it should apply. It’s this one. If what the prosecutor alleges is true. This woman took a child who it was her duty to protect and tortured and destroyed her. If Convicted, this woman should face the death penalty.

But I think prosecutors have been very lax in using it when it should be used against people who have done unspeakable acts of evil. Prosecutors shy away from it. Maybe, it’s because it’s such a pain to work through and Idaho’s Capitol Punishment laws are a joke. We have people who’ve been waiting thirty years for their execution and their victims also waiting.  It is a messed up system and it needs to be fixed.

It also requires prosecutors who are willing to actually pursue the necessary sentence rather than taking the easy way out.

    

In 2008, then-Minority Leader John Boehner urged Republicans to vote for the TARP- a $750 billion Government bailout, calling it a “crap sandwich” but he voted for it and led Republicans to vote for it.

In 2011 When Speaker Boehner had a chance to demand real fiscal change, he instead blinked when facing President Obama and relented with a milquetoast deal that raised the debt ceiling with the feckless expectation that a bi-partisan commission would come up with cuts or there would be automatic spending cuts. The bi-partisan commission predictably failed and the cuts that were proposed to justify the last giant increase in the debt ceiling have been something every politician has been trying to avoid occurring.

Then this past year, Speaker Boehner,  floundered in negotiations with President Obama punted to the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, ending up with a bill that increases the debt limit by increasing taxes $40 for every $1 in spending cuts.

Talk about crap sandwiches. It’s time for John Boehner to go.

He became Republican leader in 2006 after Tom DeLay resigned. He was chosen as a compromise candidate between the status quo roughshod management style of then Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Conservative Stalwart John Shadegg (R-Az.).  He is Speaker by accident and he has shown no talents particular for the job.

Boehner has no negotiating acumen. He is constantly outmaneuvered at every turn by the White House in negotiations. Despite, a working class background, he does not communicate effectively with the American people.

He doesn’t seem to have a Caucus that’s willing to follow him. He proposed a “Plan B” that would raise taxes only on those earning $1 million or more and was unable to get his own caucus to support it.  This could have been because, knowing that he would need conservative support for any sort of debt ceiling deal, he antagonized that part of his caucus by punishing four members of the Caucus for not towing the party line. He’s no better with the moderate side of the Republican Caucus. When he was minority leader, he failed to get the moderates to go along with an earmark ban within the Republican Caucus.

The only sort of “leadership” Boehner is capable of is presenting doomsday scenarios as he did on TARP and on the fiscal cliff to frighten cowardly politicians into betraying conservative principles. John Boehner is like a general whose only talent is leading retreats.

When people speak of John Boehner and his defense, they say he’s a good man. I don’t dispute it, but that’s not good enough. They say it’s a tough job, and they’re right. But the fact remains that it’s a tough job he has shown himself incapable of doing.

They may even argue in defense of this bill that it was necessary for Republicans to get the tax issue off the table. The debate had ceased to be about deficit spending and had become about the willingness of Republicans to vainly block tax increases on the rich. Their may be a kernel of truth to that, but whose fault is it that the debate got away from Republicans? None other than Boehner’s.

Republicans might hope that with the tax issue off the table they can turn this debate back to spending and reducing our mammoth debt. However, they’d be wrong, as long as John Boehner remains Speaker of the House. Boehner has turned the Speaker’s office into a veritable “Crap Sandwich” stand and Democrats can expect that he will cry and quote poetry, but at the end of the day, he will blink and once again he’ll serve up his apologies and tell the House and the American people to swallow the latest confection that has happened to him. If Republicans expect a different result, they’d better get a different Speaker.

Nothing symbolizes what’s wrong with the Republican Party in America than that the fact that John Boehner is the most powerful Republican in this country. As long as that’s the case, the Republican Party is pointless and irrelevant. The Republican Party’s position today is reminiscent of the post-World War II GOP that enjoyed terms in the majority but squandered it’s time there behind the listless leadership of Speaker Joseph Martin who led the Republican Party to become a minority for forty years.

If there are not seventeen members in the entire House Republican membership who have the courage to prevent the re-election of this leader who is dragging our Party and our country, than the Republican Party isn’t worth a red cent. To be clear, if John Boehner is re-elected Speaker of the House, I intend to expend no effort for and give no money to the national Republican Party and its various committees. As long as John Boehner remains America’s most influential Republican, it is  a waste of time, energy, and money.