More on How Internally Fragmented Our Political Parties Are

The title of this Politico story is “Idaho GOP riven by primary civil war.” An excerpt:

Idaho’s dominant Republican Party is at war with itself up and down the ballot ahead of its May 17 primaries.

It’s not just Gov. Brad Little, whose reelection campaign became national news when Donald Trump endorsed a primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. The state attorney general is staring down a challenge from a former rabble-rousing member of Congress. The senior of Idaho’s two GOP House members is facing a primary that has drawn millions in spending. And contentious open races for lieutenant governor and the secretary of state — Idaho’s chief election official — echo some of the national divisions within the party.

There is bound to be some infighting in a state where ambitious pols only have a few routes up the ladder. But there’s more to it in Idaho, where the party’s longtime control over the booming state has bred sharp differences and fierce enmity between two wings of the GOP. https://d319c3243f0229059c914a31426a3bde.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“Some people would describe it as conservative, and then far-right conservative,” said Tom Luna, the chair of the state Republican Party. That “far-right” camp, Luna continued, “would call themselves conservatives and everybody else moderates.”

“We’re probably a microcosm, in some ways, of a lot of places around the country,” said Tommy Ahlquist, a developer who finished third in the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary.

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