Lincoln Day

Last week I talked about the Idaho County Democratic Caucus, so with fairness in mind (I believe in picking on everyone equally) I’ll talk about the Republican “Lincoln Day” assembly held in Ferdinand on Saturday. Essentially this event was put on by the Idaho County and Lewis County Republicans to allow various GOP office holders and hopeful candidates to meet the public, and jump up on a stump to do a bit of speechmaking. Sen. Mike Crappo was there, as were Rep. Bill Sali and Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, along with about a hundred other folks.

Problem number one for the day just had to involve my navigational skills. I mean, how can you possibly get lost in Ferdinand!? But never fear gentle reader, I managed. I had in mind that the assembly was to be held at the Ferdinand Community Center (a big building with a lot of cars parked out front), which I didn’t remember seeing before, so I drove right on by the Gym (a big building with a lot of cars parked out front), looking for a “Community Center” sign. Please don’t ask me where my mind was, I think I left it at home…

Most of the office holders present were on pretty tight schedules, so they were scrambling around shaking as many hands as possible and then moving on. That doesn’t allow a poor reporter much time to ask the dozen or so questions he has in mind. I think I spoke with Sen. Crappo for probably thirty seconds before he disappeared into the crowd, and I never did get near him again. Rep. Sali wasn’t in quite such a hurry, so I did speak to him for a moment. I’d never met him before, but he seems like a pretty nice guy who definitely will take the time to talk with his constituents.

One of my current hot button subjects is the latest “Gun Grab” deal, whereby many military veterans are denied the right to possess a firearm. It is of course quite sensible from a bleeding hearted liberal public safety point of view, in that veterans with possible PTSD aren’t allowed to possess guns with which they might commit mass murder. Unfortunately, under this law, nearly anyone from a doctor, to the cop on the beat, to a casual acquaintance can simply say “He’s nuts” for as little as having an occasional nightmare, and true or not, the vet is up the proverbial watercourse, without the proverbial means of propulsion. The burden of proving otherwise is laid on the vet, and getting this “nuts” label removed is going to be very difficult. I asked Rep. Sali just how this thing got passed, and he explained that the law was slipped in as a rider on another measure, and apparently no one knew it was coming. (I’d think that congressmen would at least read the entire Bill coming up for a vote, before they passed them.) The next question was obviously “Are we going to get rid of this?” to which he quickly answered “Yes”. He says there is a movement afoot to repeal this particularly odious measure that specifically targets military veterans, but he didn’t want to get into any of the particulars. I for one certainly hope it gets repealed, and soon! There have been a lot of unfounded claims in the eastern mass media of late, of how so many returning “mentally disturbed” Iraqi War veterans are indiscriminately killing people or committing suicide. From some of the news reports you’d think all Iraq vets were automatically incipient mass murderers. In reality the chance of being killed by a mentally disturbed vet is much lower than that of being killed by a member of the general public, particularly in New York and Washington DC, and the so called suicide rate is actually some sort of a “violent death” rate that counts all causes, including any returnee who just happens to be the victim of a traffic accident!

Many of the candidates present were running for Larry Craig’s soon to be vacated Senate seat. The speeches from these hopefuls covered pretty much the standard GOP fare, cutting back on the federal “tax and spend” feeding frenzy (which unfortunately nobody can seem to get a handle on), protecting individual rights, enforcing immigration laws, guarding our borders, and of course the perennial fight against big government. I didn’t hear much said about the “abortion on demand” question, or of biological research, but the undercurrent was there of course. For the most part I fully agree with the ideas our GOP senatorial hopefuls are trying to get across, and I hope one of them does get elected to Larry’s senate seat. But I also rather worry about the chances of their really accomplishing anything in the near future. They all have good ideas I’d say, but we also know how much clout a freshman senator has.

Nothing much was said about the presidential race unless you spoke with some individual or other, unfortunate, as I consider that to be extremely important in this election. Of the Republican candidates (McCain, Huckabee, Romney, and Paul), I can’t really accept any of them. I’ll probably agree with Paul’s ideas more than the others, but even if he does manage to get elected president I really can’t see congress cooperating with him at all. He wants to cut the federal budget, yet the congressional budget battles remind me of a whole mess of hogs pushing and shoving at the feeding trough. Does anyone really think they’re going to cheerfully eliminate their chances to spend our hard earned tax money!? He wants to severely reduce the size of the federal government, but will congress agree to toss patronage in the wastebasket? I’d like to see him go through with repealing the Patriot Act, eliminating the Department of Homeland Security, and outlawing domestic spying. Generally our Idaho senatorial hopefuls seem to be on the same wavelength even if most of the presidential hopefuls aren’t. Yet these are all programs strongly supported by Republicans across the country, and I rather doubt congress is going to smile benignly on any attempt to eliminate them.

There were several people around that I know, anywhere from “sorta-kinda” to fairly well, so there was a lot of “Hey, how ‘ya doing?” going on. I ran into one particular friend as well, Brad Mittendorf, who’s running for Lewis County Sheriff. We go back quite a ways, and the last time I saw him we were both still wearing Army uniforms. As I can’t vote in Lewis County we didn’t discuss politics much, but rather caught up on the past few years a bit, and like old soldiers do, promised to meet again one of these days, something I really need to do.