His View: Idaho lawmakers and the Taliban share common gene

Where were you when Idaho began slipping into a Christian-themed theocracy? Were you already living here and watched as it unfolded? Or was the transformation underway by the time you arrived?

Either way, there’s no denying the Gem State has become a place where God’s will is routinely invoked inside the state Capitol. Just like the Taliban in Afghanistan, religious scolds — long on judgment, short on forgiveness — have been infiltrating state government for years.

Keep in mind that Idaho wasn’t always a righteous Republican fiefdom.

Thirty years ago, the governor was Cecil Andrus — a pragmatic Democrat with a wide environmental streak. The congressman for North Idaho was Larry LaRocco, a two-term Democrat who won reelection by more than 50,000 votes — carrying every county in the 1st Congressional District. The Attorney General was Larry Echo Hawk, a Democrat, and the state controller was J.D. Williams, also a Democrat.

You read that right: 30 years ago, Democrats outnumbered Republicans on the Idaho Land Board, three to two. At that point, the governor’s mansion had been occupied by a Democrat for 24 years.

The tide turned decisively on election day in 1994. Andrus had declined to seek reelection, and Republican Phil Batt defeated Echo Hawk in the race for governor. By today’s standards, Batt was a pretty bland Republican, but Idaho’s political pendulum has been swinging farther and farther to the right since he left office.

Now behold what this rising GOP tide has delivered. The state legislature is in thrall to an Idaho Republican Party that celebrates armed militia members and ridicules the need for caution during a global pandemic. The state GOP has declared jihad on old-school Republicans, the kind who focus on actual problems faced by constituents; today, such politicians are denounced as RINOs — Republicans in name only.

This new GOP has shifted its focus to far-right issues such as domestic terrorism. To provide cover for home-grown militia members who might, y’know, kill a few people with pipe bombs, the state legislature tried mightily to amend the state’s Terrorist Control Act so it could only apply to people working with foreign terrorist organizations. In other words, you’d be a domestic terrorist if you were building bombs for Hamas, but you would not be a domestic terrorist if you were building pipe bombs with your locally-born white supremacist buddies. Three-quarters of the Idaho Senate voted to approve that preposterous exemption, but it failed to advance in the House after public outcry began to boil over.

Not to worry, there are plenty of other issues for the legislature’s angry conservatives to sink their teeth into.

Take abortion, please. Idaho currently has one of the strictest abortion laws in the country, with only two exemptions: 1) Victims of rape or incest (police report required); and 2) Pregnant women who need abortions to save their lives.

Those are pretty narrow exemptions, and even the Mormon Church has a broader outlook. In addition to exceptions for rape, incest and saving women’s lives, the church also approves of abortions to safeguard women’s health.

That may sound like semantic hair-splitting, but the distinction is profound. Idaho law holds that women must be at risk of death before abortions are OK, whereas the Mormon position is that abortions are justified to protect women from irreversible harm.

The Mormon Church also gives its blessing to a final scenario that Idaho lawmakers deliberately omitted. The church’s official position is that abortion is permissible if “a competent physician determines that the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”

Think about that for a moment. Idaho’s sanctimonious lawmakers insist a pregnant woman with a doomed fetus must carry it to term. There are many words one could use to describe the state’s new abortion law, but “ghoulish” and “sadistic” are two that spring to mind.

Sad to say, but you know your state has been hijacked by right-wing extremists when the Mormon Church emerges as a moderating influence. If they’re watching, the Taliban surely recognize Idaho lawmakers as kindred souls.

Brock has been a Daily News columnist for more than 20 years. He has lived on the Palouse even longer.