The Utah County Republican Party held a convention last Saturday and, because it is dominated by a ideological fringe, reinforced its image as the extremist party in Utah County.  

The delegates re-nominated a group of legislators who, when not directed by the Eagle Forum, are following their own extreme right wing tendencies.  These include Chris Herrod, who was focusing on weakening child safety seat belt laws and got nearly all of his Utah County legislative colleagues to vote along with him; Becky Lockhart, who has proposed privatizing the state hospital in Provo; John Dougall, who believes poor people can live quite well on food stamps; Craig Frank, who didn't think the voters should have been able to decide the vouchers issue; and Brad Daw, who sponsored legislation to allow the government to snoop into your cell phone records and bank accounts without a warrant from a judge.  (Even the Eagle Forum thought that went too far!)

They also allowed two other non-incumbent extremists to go into primaries.  Joel Wright, who is the darling of the Eagle Forum and who wants to gut an already tight county government, is in a primary with Gary Anderson.  And Mike Thompson, former state representative from Orem who was defeated by Lorie Fowlke in 2004, also made it out of the convention.

These are the legislators who have given us the following:

1. Virulent opposition to ethics reform - None of them supported the ethics initiative.  Instead, they voted for a watered down ethics law that requires a citizen to personally witness an ethics violation in order to lodge a complaint.  That's an impossible standard in most cases, and the legislators know it.

2. Little or no effort to help struggling families during a severe economic recession. Of course, such help offends their libertarian tendencies and would incur the wrath of the Eagle Forum.

3. Repeated message bills condemning the federal government.  Yet, no word of thanks to the federal government for a stimulus package that saved thousands of teachers' jobs in Utah and, had it not passed, would have resulted in class sizes ballooning much larger than they are now and higher unemployment in the state.

4. Continual neglect of our public education system.  These legislators will preside over the most devastating cuts in public education in recent memory.  That isn't just because a recession is going; they've been cutting the state's contribution to public education for the past 15 years!

5. The least funded university in the state -- Utah Valley University.  Why haven't they pushed for putting UVU on a funding par with other state universities?  It is because they've been too busy with message bills designed to satisfy the Eagle Forum and their extremist Republican activist constituencies.