Bitter Rhetoric

A response to Mary Souza

I first heard Mary Souza speak early in the 2022 primary. She was a sitting state senator at the time running for secretary of state against Dorothy Moon and Phil McGrane. I came away from the meeting believing that Souza had some good ideas, but that Moon was better prepared for the job. I certainly had no negative feelings toward Souza.

The last year has revealed a tremendous well of bitterness in her, however. On the eve of the 2022 GOP Convention she emailed me and the rest of the delegates a nasty screed about how awful Dorothy Moon was and how we definitely should not elect her as state chair. I was disappointed.

It did not end there, however. Earlier this year, Mary Souza launched a column in the Coeur d’Alene Press that seemed singularly devoted to attacking the Idaho Freedom Foundation. She attacked our record, our history, our mission, everything about the organization. She attacked each employee by name, including me despite my having just started a few days prior. (The only dirt she could find on me was the same tweet that all the other leftists were going crazy over.)

Once you strip away the innuendo and the falsehoods, her biggest complaint about the IFF was that we were effective at persuading lawmakers to vote in favor of liberty and in educating voters about how their lawmakers voted.

I think Souza’s “IFF Files” series went on for 7 or 8 weeks, I lost count. I guess she’s run out of things to complain about regarding the IFF so now she is back to warning about the evil interlopers hiding within the Idaho Republican Party. Her column this week was once again an opportunity to grind her bitter axe against the IFF, Dorothy Moon, Brent Regan, and so many others who were once allies before her bridge burning spree.

Read the whole thing here. I have placed her words in block quotes, and my responses follow.

Dear Idaho Republican citizens, so sorry to interrupt your summer activities, but you need to pay attention to some scary rules and resolutions designed to take away your rights.

Scary! She’s already told you how you’re supposed to feel before giving you any information.

It is happening this week, June 23 and 24, in a tiny town tucked away in the very middle of Idaho’s mountains.

The Idaho Republican Party will be quietly holding its summer meeting in Challis on these June dates.

I was in the room at the Winter Meeting when Dorothy Moon suggested hosting the Summer Meeting in Pocatello. Terrell Tovey, Region VI Chair, reacted very strongly against having the meeting in his home town. Whether his objections were for real, or he was just grumpy at Moon, I have no idea. So she elected to host the meeting in Challis instead.

I’ve heard it’s beautiful up there, and it’s killing me to miss out, but I thought it best to stay close to home with my week-old baby.

Only chosen delegates and their guests are allowed.

Is this true? Registration is closed now, but I believe that anyone could have registered to attend as a guest. I did so to attend the Winter Meeting in Boise last January, and I know a lot of people who are not members of the state central committee who are attending this weekend. Mary Souza wouldn’t simply make stuff up, would she?

Also, by “chosen delegates” I assume she means the members of the state central committee who are elected by PCs throughout the state. Unfortunately this is just the beginning of some incredible rhetorical obfuscation on Souza’s part.

They will be voting on some controversial rules and resolutions so contentious they were held over from the IDGOP’s winter meeting. These issues are still highly problematic, but now are out of the spotlight as you and I are trying to enjoy our summer, while already distracted by the national furor going on in D.C. and Florida.

Notice her framing. “You and I” are just trying to enjoy our summer, but those evil Idaho Republicans are engaging in “controversial,” “contentious,” and “problematic” things.

Quite surprisingly, there are eerie similarities between the federal government and the IDGOP. While the feds raid, confiscate documents, hold hearings and indict (formally accuse) a current presidential candidate, our Idaho GOP tries, for a second time, to pass a rule mandating obedience reviews to indict (formally accuse), and possibly even remove, Republican officials you elected but whom the party decides are not loyal enough. All of these actions by government, whether in D.C. or in Idaho, are destined to take away the power of your vote.

Notice how she conflates the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago with a proposed rule change in a state party organization. Most organizations have rules in place that dictate how and when officers can be removed. The lack of such in the Idaho GOP was an issue at the last meeting as the members of the committee debated whether or not the national committeeman had vacated his position due to moving out of state. It was somewhat chaotic, because it was a situation the rules did not address. Fixing that area of the bylaws is a good thing, but Souza, in her hatred and bitterness of the current administration, casts it as evil.

As a U.S. citizen and registered Idaho Republican voter, you are the one to decide if the accused presidential candidate or any accused Republican official in Idaho is worthy of your vote. Either side can give you information, but if they remove the candidate or official, they invalidate your power. It is an absolute power grab attempt by both the federal government and the IDGOP.

More conflation. Idaho Republican Party officers are not elected by the people at large, rather they are elected by the delegates to the state convention. Souza doesn’t tell you this, though, because she wants you to think that Dorothy Moon and her evil league of evil are trying to steal your vote!

Why would our Idaho Republican Party leadership pursue such an arrogant, aggressive path? For answers, just look at their leadership upheaval recently. Last summer, Dorothy Moon was made chairman of the party at a highly contentious convention in Twin Falls.

When she says “Dorothy Moon was made chairman” she neglects to explain that Moon was in fact elected with more than 60% of the vote of the delegates to the state convention. Souza implies that this was some backroom deal rather than an overwhelming electoral victory.

Such a landslide indicates that the convention was not nearly as “contentious” as Souza claims. The previous two chair races had been decided by less then 15 votes combined. It seems that the word “contentious” here simply means “an outcome that Mary Souza disapproved of”.

Dorothy is closely tied to the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and her husband, Darr Moon, is on the National Council for the John Birch Society. Several of our large county delegations to that convention were stacked with know-nothing first-time delegates loyal to IFF. They wanted obedience not someone who thinks.

It really is amazing to me how much of a bogeyman the Idaho Freedom Foundation is to leftists like Mary Souza. The level of obsession is off the charts. IFF is a public policy think tank that rates legislation using transparent and objective metrics, and legislators earn scores based on how they vote on that legislation. That’s it. Yet people like Souza think that we are all-powerful puppet masters micromanaging the Legislature. Does she really think that first-time delegates to the state convention signed some sort of loyalty oath to the IFF before being allowed to go to Twin Falls? That’s insane.

(Side note: As the sitting state senator for District 4, Coeur d’Alene at that time, I was denied a spot as a Kootenai County delegate to that convention.)

I’m sorry this happened to you.

As George Carlin said, “It’s a small club, and we’re not in it.”

Is Souza upset because she’s no longer in the small club?

On that note, here are just three of the many issues they will decide at this June meeting:

Be sure to read the text of the resolutions yourself, which Souza did not provide in her column.

The “Enforcement Rule,” 2023-8. It says any elected Republican official, from the U.S. Congress on down to the county level, are subject to review by Idaho Republican Party officials at any time. They may be “censured” for a first violation, and if there’s a second violation, the party may prohibit use of the Republican name or logos for five years. But wait, it gets even weirder: Idaho’s two U.S. senators, Crapo and Risch, or our U.S. representatives, could be summoned by state party officials, at any time, and must respond within 10 days. I wonder if they could summon a sitting Republican president as well?

Does Souza believe that it is wrong for Republican PCs to hold their elected officials accountable to their campaign promises and to the Republican platform? It sure seems that way.

You should know that Brent Regan is the current chair of the IDGOP Rules Committee. He’s also the chair of Kootenai County Republican Central Committee and he’s Idaho Freedom Foundation’s Chairman of the Board. Why all this power for one person?

Mary Souza has not forgiven Brent Regan for the Kootenai County GOP endorsing Dorothy Moon for secretary of state in 2022. In fact, most of Souza’s discourse for the last year probably stems from that insult.

President Ronald Reagan famously cautioned, “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

Of the two figures in question I think Brent Regan more closely resembles the principles of Ronald Reagan than Mary Souza. But never let that get in the way of a pithy quote.

Resolution 2023-39 worries me greatly. It says that you, the Republican primary election voters, should not choose the Republican candidates to represent you in the general election, as has been the longstanding process. No, they think that decision should be made by your Republican Central Committee. And they want to make it an amendment to our Idaho Constitution so it will be difficult to ever change back. Think this could not happen in the Idaho GOP? I’ve personally heard KCRCC leadership say, out loud, that they should choose the candidates, not the voters.

Either Mary Souza is confused or she is outright lying. Read it for yourself. The clear purpose of Resolution 2023-39 is to urge the passage of an amendment clarifying that political parties have the inherent right to choose their nominees. Not the central committee, but the party, which is made up of registered voters. The point of 2023-39 is to ensure that Republican voters can pick Republican candidates, rather than opening up the primary (as many leftists want to do) and allow Democrats to have a voice in the GOP nominee.

Why is Souza so against this common-sense idea that she is outright lying about what the resolution says?

Watch out for Resolution 2023-38. It’s a tricky move to further take away your voting power. (Do you see a theme? They do not respect Idaho’s Republican voters.) This resolution is so confusing and convoluted that I will summarize with just two quick comments. The Idaho Presidential Primary should be moved to the May election, where voter turnout is much better. We should never even consider the horrible “caucus system” for primary votes because it unfairly takes away access for large groups of registered voters. Our regular precinct voting method is far more efficient and trustworthy.

Once again, Souza grossly misrepresents what the resolution is about. 2023-38 calls on the Legislature to restore the March presidential primary - which was removed by law last session - and, failing that, calls on the Idaho GOP to come up with a plan to allow Republican voters the opportunity to take part in the 2024 presidential primary.

How is this controversial? This resolution is already cosigned by all the elected Idaho GOP officers - Dorothy Moon, Daniel Silver, Mark Fuller, Steve Bender, and Maria Nate - as well as a diverse group of party leaders from Brent Regan to Victor Miller to Trent Clark. Is Mary Souza accusing all these people of “not respect[ing] Idaho’s Republican voters”?

Lastly, I hope the IDGOP stops bullying and threatening the Republican officials you elected. If these officials don’t act in your best interest, it is you who are responsible to vote them out at the ballot box. That’s the way our representative democracy form of government was designed to work, and we had better wake up and fight to keep it. Not only do the feds want to undermine it, but our current IDGOP wants to take it away as well. The power is ours to lose.

I assume Souza is referring to the censuring of several legislators by county and district committees. What she calls “bullying” many others would call holding their elected representatives to account. For some reason, folks like Souza really don’t like it when people shine lights on their lawmakers. She hates that the IFF does it, and she hates that PCs do it. Would she prefer if the only thing you learn about your candidate is what is provided in an slick mailer paid for by big business lobbies? That doesn’t sound very representative to me.

PCs are elected by the voters to represent them, just as legislators are. Many legislators have abrogated their promises and their principles, and the PCs have done their jobs of holding those legislators accountable and delivering accurate information to the voters. That is how a republic is supposed to work. That is transparency. If Mary Souza doesn’t like it, then I hear Pyongyang is lovely this time of year.

What can you do to stop these crazy rules? Call your County Elections office, give them your address and get the contact info for your Republican Precinct Committeeman. Let them know your concerns. If you are not satisfied, consider running for the position yourself, or get someone you trust to do so. It is the only way this takeover of our Republican Party will ever change.

I totally agree that citizens who are interested in shaping the future need to get involved. By all means, get to know your PC, or run for PC yourself. By all means, get to know your legislative candidates, or run for legislature yourself. Don’t let people like Mary Souza be gatekeepers of the information you need to make good choices in politics. Don’t take my word for it either - do your own research. I trust that most liberty-minded people will see the truth and act accordingly.