A vote for the soul of the Republican Party
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2024
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a place with a long history of hate, a rebel Republican bloc mobilizes against far-right extremism within the local party.
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A generation ago, community activists were able to bankrupt and push out a white supremacist hate group that took root among the tall pines and crystal lakes of North Idaho. It was a hard-fought triumph — one North Idaho residents took pride in.
But today, some of those activists and residents worry that hateful ideologies are returning to their region.
This time, they say, the threat is no longer on the fringes of society, dressed in Nazi garb at a hideout in the woods. Instead, they say they see it in the leadership of the local Republican Party, which has mirrored the lurch to the right of the national conservative movement during the Trump era on matters of race, religion and sexuality. The bigotry of the past, they say, now has mainstream political cover.
Today on “Post Reports,” extremism and domestic terrorism reporter Hannah Allam talks with host Martine Powers about the self-described “traditional” Republicans who spent the past two years planning to wrest back control from leaders they accused of steering the local GOP toward extremism — charges those officials vehemently denied. And Hannah gives an update on their plight.
Today’s show was produced by Rennie Svirnovskiy. It was edited by Renita Jablonski and Ted Muldoon, who also mixed the episode.
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Transcript
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| 1:09.4 | We are so excited to welcome you as a subscriber and thank you so much. Now here's today's show. Earlier this month there was a Republican women's lunch in the city of Cordellain in |
| 1:29.1 | North Idaho. During an election year and a state that is very red, this is not an unusual scene. |
| 1:37.1 | But something about this lunch was unusual. The conversations happening between bites of food and the speakers who were at the microphone |
| 1:45.7 | They are part of an uprising |
| 1:48.4 | Well, welcome everyone. We're glad to see all of you. This is very exciting and as you know we have a little less than |
| 1:55.5 | three weeks to go and it's going to take all of us and I see one of the things I think |
| 2:01.9 | that's really exciting is to see our numbers grow across the communities. |
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