The Idaho Republican establishment came down hard on Rammell, condemning the comments of a fringe candidate who channels voices that have found a wide airing in the YouTube age.
Of course, the reaction could be driven by self-interest. For years, Idaho officials have been trying to convince businesses that their state is not a hotbed of hate-filled rubes, gun-toting racists and assorted nut jobs getting their information from Glenn Beck. Tech companies that thrive in the New West metro area of Boise and the outdoor paradise of the north say the state’s reputation has severely hurt efforts to recruit ethnic minorities.
The Anti-Tree Hugger
But this call to arms against an animal that has been historically misunderstood by most anyone whose name is not St.Francis of Assisi is in part a fear of letting the wild back into Western lands.
Rammell himself is a prime exhibit of a nature-phobe. Until 2007, he made his living in elk ranching, which he calls “a novel agricultural enterprise.” Imagine this majestic creature at dawn in a high mountain meadow, in all its glory. Now imagine it inside a fenced-off plot while someone tries to domesticate it into stupidity. That’s elk ranching.
As for wolves, Rammell wants them all dead, dead, dead. “I believe wolves need to be eliminated,” he says on his Web site. Does it matter to him that they roamed every Western state long before Rex Rammell started tossing one-liners to red-faced Republicans blowing on their soup at the diner?
Photo from the Bouffant ancestral homeland.
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