More than individual candidates for office are on the Republican primary election ballot.

What defines those candidates as much as anything is their values — the kind of bedrock values this state and country once took for granted.

Now, those foundations are subject to a show of hands.

Within the state — and national — GOP is a debate about the following:

There is no such thing as an American monarch. No one is above the law.

The presumed presidential nominee of the Republican Party — and his supporters within the Idaho GOP — have been undermining the integrity of the courts while insisting that Donald Trump is immune from accountability for any criminal acts he committed as president.

Here, the people rule. The elected officials are their servants.

No better example exists than in the late 1980s when Idaho Republican lawmakers who personally opposed a state lottery yielded to popular support for the measure.

Today, prominent Idaho Republicans — including state party Chairperson Dorothy Moon — are election deniers. Left to their own devices, some GOP lawmakers would sabotage the ability of people to create their own laws through the initiative and referendum process. They suppress the vote through a closed Republican primary election. Elected Republican lawmakers who serve their own constituents are harassed by local GOP central committees. Republican lawmakers are so cowed by the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s voting scorecard that they value the lobby’s support more than the preferences of their own voters.

When Idaho journalists ask that they explain themselves to the public, many Republican candidates reply: “No comment.”

And the state party has dedicated itself to repealing the 17th Amendment, which would end the popular election of U.S. senators.

Everyone in this country is free to worship as he wishes — or not — but there remains a wall of separation between church and state.

Following the dictates of Idaho Family Policy Center President Blaine Conzatti rather than the public, some Republicans are willing to tell you what you can read in a library and what you can’t. They want to divert tax dollars from public education into private and religious schools. Some even go so far as to advocate a Christian nationalism.

Idaho embraces a pioneer, live-and-let-live ethic.

No longer. Now it’s Big Brother substituting its judgment for that of Idaho women, their families and health care providers. Doctors who respond to women suffering through crisis pregnancies are threatened with mandatory jail terms. Parents have been invited to leave the state to get medical treatment for their transgender children.

The Constitution is the law of the land.

Try telling that to Republicans who openly espouse nullification of federal laws they don’t like.

Stress tests have proven the safeguards designed to protect democracy through checks and balances are more fragile than we thought.

The idea of a unifying public interest has been challenged by those who care more about personal and professional gain.

“The stability of a republican form of government” depends “mainly upon the intelligence of the people.”

On the ballot this year, if you look closely enough, are people who deny what their own experience and established science tells them. To them, human-caused climate change is a hoax. If the knowledge of medicine accumulated over decades interferes with their beliefs, then they attack public health in the midst of a pandemic. Some openly agree with former IFF President Wayne Hoffman’s assertion that government should not “be in the education business. It is the most virulent form of socialism (and indoctrination thereto) in America today.”

You’ll find Republicans who don’t support higher education and would not help high school graduates get the training they need for a better life.

E pluribus unum (“out of many, one”).

Given the tribal nature of internecine Republican politics within the Gem State, does anyone doubt the organizing premise driving some GOP politicians today is negative partisanship? They don’t so much like their team. But they despise the other side. To them, compromise is a dirty word.

In just about every one of these instances, the trend line is headed in the wrong direction. Find out where the candidates stand. One good source of information is the Take Back Idaho voter guide (takebackidaho.com/voter-guide).

Then vote Tuesday. Otherwise, nothing will change. — M.T.