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" Apparently, those Republicans in Idaho not presently underground eating canned yams, listening to the short-wave, and oiling up their shootin&amp;#039; &amp;#039;arns had themselves a real wingding of a convention over the weekend. Among other things, it can be seen as a test case of the political skills of Congressman Raul Labrador, the convention&amp;#039;s chairman and a tea-partyish player who&amp;#039;s been making noises about replacing Eric Cantor as the Majority Leader of the House. One of the other things it can be seen as is a comedy shitshow of the highest order. Congressman Labrador&amp;#039;s skills as a political wrangler were not on obvious display here. Before state convention chairman and Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador called for adjournment Saturday afternoon, Bannock County&amp;#039;s entire 15-member delegation had been unseated. Efforts to do the same with the delegations from Ada and Twin Falls counties were underway. &amp;quot;I had a hint going into it we were going to run into trouble,&amp;quot; said Bannock County GOP Chairman Tony Madsen. When the 15 people selected to represent Bannock County arrived in Moscow, eight other county residents were already at the convention claiming the delegate selection process in Bannock County was flawed. Similar challenges were filed against the Ada County Republicans and its delegation. Madsen said this led to lengthy debates within the credentials committee. Madsen said complaints were filed by a group of Bannock County Republicans claiming the county party leadership had ignored their input and did not hold proper elections to select delegates for the state convention. And yes, if you&amp;#039;re curious, the fine hand of Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) and his minions was in evidence as well. Similar disagreements between the libertarian/tea party Republicans and establishment Republicans cropped up in other Idaho counties and eventually about a fifth of the delegates attending the convention were unseated. &amp;quot;We need to stop hauling our dirty laundry out in public,&amp;quot; Madsen said. Bingham County GOP Chairman Dan Cravens said the disagreements with the Republican Party are not helping with the main goal of the party - to get Republicans elected. Republicans currently hold every statewide office in Idaho and 80 percent of the seats in the Idaho Legislature. &amp;quot;It was a unique experience,&amp;quot; Cravens said about the shortened convention. &amp;quot;It was frustrating.&amp;quot; Cravens said the Bingham County delegation could see no legitimate reason for the Bannock County delegation to be unseated, but the Bonneville County delegation voted unanimously to unseat their GOP counterparts from Bannock.  &amp;quot;We failed to move toward party unity,&amp;quot; Cravens said. Man alive, absolutely nothing gets by Chairman Cravens, I&amp;#039;ll tell you that. Evidently, the Republicans in the northern part of the state are laying clubs on each other on a fairly regular basis, and that&amp;#039;s mucking up the state party as a whole. Civility doesn&amp;#039;t exactly reign in the area. Whalen said that kind of politics isn&amp;#039;t his style. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a product of a large family, so consensus building and trying to get along is part of my nature,&amp;quot; he said. The Whalen-Nonini matchup turned bitter after Nonini&amp;#039;s wife, Cathyanne, sent an email to both the local and national leadership of the Boys &amp;amp;amp; Girls Clubs notifying them that eight years ago Whalen had a DUI. Whalen is the longtime president of the Boys &amp;amp;amp; Girls Clubs of Kootenai County. &amp;quot;We do not feel it is a good example for a person with a DUI conviction to be serving on a B&amp;amp;amp;G Club Board,&amp;quot; she wrote. Whalen offered to resign from the board, but the organization declined to accept his resignation. At a Chamber of Commerce candidate forum last Thursday, he revealed the DUI and the dust-up. Nonini responded by accusing Whalen of a &amp;quot;cheap shot&amp;quot; at his wife. Nonini himself was arrested, but not convicted, in 1983 for possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, and acknowledged that he later served as an informant in a drug sting. Whalen said, &amp;quot;We didn&amp;#039;t expect the Noninis to be the ones to bring it up because he has so much to hide in his past.&amp;quot; Bear in mind that Republicans hold every statewide office in Idaho and 80 percent of the seats in the Idaho legislature, and they could pretty much nominate Nouri al Maliki for auditor and get him elected. But for those of us in the other 49 states, this may be the most significant development of all. On a small scale, what happened in Idaho is further evidence that the Establishment Strikes Back narrative is not so much mistaken as it is irrelevant, at least at the state level. The forces of Crazy Uncle Liberty (!) and his ambitious spalpeen were beaten badly in the recent Idaho Republican primaries, but they still retained enough strength to turn the state convention into a fiasco, and to put a dent in Raul Labrador&amp;#039;s attempt to increase his influence as a national Republican figure. The outcome wasn&amp;#039;t promising for Labrador, whom many looked to as the healer for the fractured party just a day after he announced that he&amp;#039;s running for Majority Leader of the U.S. House. Instead, he ended the convention facing jeers and walkouts from his own party members. Weatherby said the only comparable event he could think of was Nevada&amp;#039;s GOP convention fiasco in 2008, which was canceled before delegates to the national convention had been selected. &amp;quot;And again, Ron Paul forces or libertarian forces were involved in that fiasco as well,&amp;quot; Weatherby said. This, you should also keep in mind\u2014in his home state, Raul Labrador got his hair mussed because there were enough Republicans to fck with his future because there were enough Republicans who don&amp;#039;t think Raul Labrador is conservative enough. And the wingnut performance of Zeno&amp;#039;s Paradox gets another workout. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21001/the-idaho-republicans/>