This was a headline from a recently released report on legislative voting from the Institute for Legislative Analysis. While I’m not fond of the term RINO there are other descriptions that come to mind like imposter, cheat, and liar. I recall a time not to long ago when I sat in a central committee meeting where a candidate pledged to the committee he would vote exactly like a sitting legislator in his district, who had a 97% conservative voting record from the freedom index. This gentleman accepted a $1000 check, walked out the door, and proceeded to vote like a democrat once elected and seated in the legislature.
There are many of us who, for years now, have pointed out that Idaho is not the reddest of the so-called red states. This double-speak works well in an area like ours where we are generally trustworthy people; we blindly trust those that we choose to represent us; after all, that is why we voted for them.
Once they are elected to office, we see their offenses to our freedoms using our tax dollars. Being the forgiving, compassionate folks we are here in Idaho, we tend to overlook their lies and try to justify in our minds that ‘it could be worse.’
Vote by vote, year by year, our freedoms, self-sufficiency, and state checkbook are compromised. Our dependence on federal debt dollars increases, and we slowly realize that one vote and one compromise at a time, our state and personal sovereignty is given up.
To compound all of this, the media is controlled by big dollar entities in the state, whose best interest is to keep all of us quiet, as unconcerned taxpayers.
Just recently, several very conservative legislators who vote in line with true Republican (conservative) values were removed from their leadership positions on their legislative committees by Senator Chuck Winder because of information they shared on their social media platforms.
I read the informative articles that contained proof and documentation supporting what these champions of freedom were disseminating. These were not political hit pieces based on hearsay.
Yet, these legislators were told they would remain removed from their vice chairmanships if they did not apologize. I would ask, apologize for what, being honest?
During my time in the Senate, I experienced some of this anger that is directed at those who hold the standard of conservativism. The hate is viral, and sunlight is the best disinfectant. Those who dwell with a dark heart do not like revelations of truth.
Thanks to the recent research report by the Institute for Legislative Analysis, we now have the tools and the information to realize just how our elected officials perform their duties by how they vote. Each vote is a matter of public record that is now reported by several credible organizations who do the groundwork for us. We don’t have to look up each vote and perform a detailed analysis of each piece of legislation.
The question is, what will you do? Will you, at a minimum, read the information provided by this credible report, or will you just vote for some imposter who will put an ‘R’ behind their name to get elected?
The choice is yours. The freedom is yours. The republic is yours… what will you do now that you know the truth about who are the true conservatives? I urge you to click on the three links below and see how so many have taken advantage of your trust in the system.
https://acu-ratings-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/ACU_Ratings_ID-2023.pdf
https://www.limitedgov.org/just-released-idaho-report/
https://index.idahofreedom.org/
