Their Own Private Idaho

Yesterday was primary day for Idaho. And yesterday we looked at the lack of momentum for teabagger candidates in California GOP primary campaigns. Turns out to have been a different story in Idaho... kind of. First off, Idaho is a country unto itself. This place is so extreme right that the teabaggers actually endorsed the Blue Dog Democratic incumbent, Walt Minnick! In the other district, ID-02, Mike Simpson, who was first elected in 1998, was deemed insufficiently right-wing-- and, like so many of the corporate whores who utterly dominate the Republican congressional establishment, he voted for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout while taking campaign "contributions" (legalistic, veiled bribes) from the banksters he was voting to bail out. He was targeted by teabaggers for his TARP vote and managed to eke out an embarrassing 55% win.

But the real action was in Minnick's district, where two right-wing extremists were vying for the GOP nod to take him on. First of all, it's important to remember that both-- Raul Labrador and Vaughn Ward-- would be considered stark raving mad (if not dangerous) anywhere else in the U.S. outside of South Carolina, Arizona and Texas. What made the race interesting is that Ward was endorsed by the NRCC and by Sarah Palin and that Labrador was endorsed by a gang of local teabaggers-- different ones from the teabaggers who had endorsed Minnick. So Ward had all the GOP institutional support and all the corrupt cash flowing his way. That turned out to have worked against him as Labrador rolled over him 48-39% in what the GOP Establishment considers an upset.

On election day Ward had tried putting one over on the voters by claiming-- falsely-- he had been endorsed by Idaho wing nut Senator Mike Crapo. Crapo publicly denounced the tactic and demanded a retraction. And that was just one of many mishaps that doomed Ward's harebrained campaign.

Ward, the establishment favorite, had a six-to-one money advantage over Labrador, and had a heavy television presence while Labrador ran only radio spots. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also campaigned for Ward in the closing days of the race.

But Ward made several missteps in the campaign. In a debate with Labrador he declared that Puerto Rico was not a part of the U.S. When Labrador, who was born in Puerto Rico, corrected him, Ward responded: “I really don’t care what it is, it doesn’t matter.”

Ward also faced plagiarism allegations on his campaign Web site and in his speeches. Politico reported that Ward’s kick-off campaign speech in January closely mirrored that of President Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

He was also dinged by the Pentagon for appearing in uniform in a campaign ad, and was forced to take down the ad.

Blue America won't be taking a stand in the general election in this race, pitting two clueless reactionaries, Minnick and Labrador-- each endorsed by a different faction of teabagging imbeciles-- against each other. The only good outcome would be an old fashioned duel... with both successful.