Port: ‘Things have to get worse before they can get better. I just thought we hit worse a few years ago’
MINOT, N.D. — “Normal people are exhausted by all this,” a friend of mine, who is, or at least was, deeply involved in Republican politics in North Dakota, said to me recently.
They refer to the mortifying antics of our Republican majority in Bismarck and the slow takeover of the NDGOP by a new breed of Trump-era populists that define their agenda as mere opposition to whatever liberals might be for.
In years past, the kooks in North Dakota’s Republican ranks were tolerated. They were backbenchers. They might embarrass the party with a zany bill or some uncouth behavior, but they didn’t represent the party’s mainstream.
I used the past tense there because that’s the past. The fringe is taking over the NDGOP, and the evidence is on full display in Bismarck, where we’ve seen bills to ban books , and ban vaccines , and generally implement a policy agenda that’s ripped right from the mouths of the lying grifters who make up the Fox News primetime lineup .
