Just a partisan result
Marty Trillhaase’s dyspeptic Nov. 10 take on the election was the Tribune calling its Republican readers “bitter, clinging, deplorable garbage.”
There’s nothing that happened on Election Day in Idaho that can’t be explained by basic group dynamics and the known inertial advantage of incumbency, including that of our party system itself.
Reclaim Idaho took a legit concern of voters, the downside of a closed GOP primary, got in bed with Unite America and went down the road of trying to take out the party system itself.
Parties, including the Democrats, don’t cotton to that notion. Neither do their rank and file, as voters showed by saying “no” to ranked choice voting across the nation.
Destroying the party system to open primaries might have appealed to the Tribune’s brass and other GOP haters. The voters disagreed.
It’s possible that some Democrats still want dedicated Democrats, not “prefers” Democrats on the ballot. It’s just a partisan result, not hyperpartisan.
To Trillhaase, of course, the explanation has to be “GOP equals extreme evil.” It’s an attitude that pervades the Tribune’s opinion in general and did so on Proposition 1 in particular. The tactic proved to be poison at the ballot box.
Idaho Republicans realized the risks Prop 1 posed to its power, put aside their internal differences and closed ranks against obviously hostile outsiders like Trillhaase, Reclaim Idaho and the Idaho Democrats.
Perfectly predictable basic group dynamics and, as a result, Trillhaase is once again the Charlie Tuna of Idaho politics. Sorry, Charlie.
Thomas A. Hennigan
Asotin
Prayers were answered
I have been praying for so long that the silent majority in this country would stand up and be heard. That prayer was answered on Election Day.
The majority stood up and gave Donald Trump a landslide victory to be the next president of this country. That majority represents all the good, hard-working Americans in the country, going out and scratching out a living for their families. They come from all different ethnic backgrounds, working alongside one another in harmony.
I am now praying that this majority will put to sleep, once and for all, the discord of the minority, woke agenda, i.e., LGBT, transgender, critical race theory and Black Lives Matter. This agenda we know is fueled by the propensity of the liberal news media to try to make the American people think that their agenda is supported by the majority. That, my friends, is fake news.
Nick Hasselstrom
Clarkston
