The Weston County contingent is proposing amendments to the Wyoming GOP bylaws that would complete the party’s transition from the legacy Republican Big Tent to a tiny blanket fort with room enough for only diehard fire-breathers who know the password and wear the secret decoding ring.
This exclusionary move is further evidence, if more is needed, that political parties in Wyoming should be cut loose to act on their own as the private organizations that they truly are. No longer should they be considered half-assed wards of the state or bastard stepchildren of our political process.
Whether or not the Weston County amendments are adopted at the GOP convention, the writing is on the wall. Oral Eathorne’s Wyoming GOP wants out from under the thumb of government, and the state should lift its thumb.
Warnings about the caustic nature of political factions (or, in the parlance of our times “parties”) upon our republic have been sounded since the Federalist Papers #10, before the ink was dry on our Constitution.
Yet these private organizations have wormed their way into our body politic to the point that laws have been passed to protect their internal workings.
Wyoming has laws on our books about when and how political parties’ candidates can be selected and when they can meet as private organizations, among other constraints on their behavior.
Wyoming has no corollary laws pertaining to, lets say, the Elks Club in Worland or the Wamsutter Rockhound and Knitting Club. Why on God’s green Earth would the sovereign State of Wyoming care one whit more about the Republicans or Democrats?
Our entire public involvement, both administrative and financial, in primary elections does nothing more than remove from organized political parties their own responsibility for selecting their slate of candidates.
The time is ripe, given the Weston County proposal, for political parties in Wyoming to stand up on their own hind legs and do their own work free of public involvement in their private matters.
So long as they don’t break any other laws, political parties should be free to choose their candidates and conduct their business in any manner they see fit.
If the Republicans want to choose their slate by arm wrestling or watermelon seed spittin’ contests, it's of no import to the rest of Wyoming.
If the Democrats want to dress up and choose their slate in a séance instead of a convention, they should be free to do so.
The State of Wyoming should bear no further responsibility than conducting our general elections. Basta. Finito. End of story.
To continue our legal involvement with the parties is to continue to subject our civic life to the whining and sniffling of immature political organizations when things don’t go their way. It is to continue to be bound by apron strings to snot-nosed toddlers who can’t tie their own shoelaces without Mom’s help.
I hope the legislature is as tired of this horseshit as most of Wyoming is. I hope they cinch up their belts and get to work.
Our election code, Chapter 22 of our statutes, should be gone over with a magnifying glass. Any law that pertains to, or even mentions, political parties in Wyoming should be pulled out, repealed and replaced with absolutely nothing.
Sure, they can expect pushback. The parties themselves will likely resist because they’ve become accustomed to government help when things get dicey
Anyone who enjoys the soapbox drama of Wyoming being drawn into the internal political pissing matches of the parties will also likely whine that, “it can’t be done!”
But it's the right thing to do. And now’s the time to do it.
Rod Miller can be reached at: rodsmillerwyo@yahoo.com
