September 29, 2026 (Cover Image Credit: Gem State Chronicle)
What Does Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment Really Mean?
By: Gem State Chronicle Publisher Brian Almon
The 1964 presidential election split the Republican Party. The conservative wing, energized by activists including William F. Buckley and Phyllis Schlafly, finally found the nominee they’d been seeking for two decades in Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. The moderate wing, led by New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, predicted doom and gloom, and in this case, they turned out to be right. Goldwater lost the electoral vote to Lyndon Johnson 52–486, which remains the largest Democratic landslide since FDR and the last time Idaho voted blue in a presidential election.
In the wake of that loss, the man who had made the biggest political speech of his career in support of Goldwater sought to become governor of California. Ronald Reagan knew that a divided party could not win, and so he proclaimed what became known as the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” Reagan would honor that pledge in the 1966 California gubernatorial election, which he won, as well as the 1976 Republican presidential primary, which he lost.
Ronald Reagan understood something fundamental about American politics. Partisan primaries can be aggressive, even vicious, but once the primary is over, parties must unite to fight the other side. The differences between Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, though stark in many ways, were smaller than the differences both had with Lyndon Johnson. And LBJ’s presidency was disastrous for America: the escalation of the Vietnam War cost tens of thousands of American lives; the Civil Rights Act, though meant to fix inequality in the Jim Crow South, quickly turned into a tool for racial quotas and shakedowns; and the Immigration Act tore apart the fabric of our country, leading to many of the cultural conflicts and illegal immigration problems we face today.
Of course, Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment was never a hard-and-fast rule. Incumbents still invoke it to shield themselves from criticism during primaries, despite Reagan himself doing just that in 1976 when he challenged President Gerald Ford. I believe the real point of the concept is that Republicans should save their most aggressive attacks for Democrats and that, once the primary is over, it’s time to unite as a party.
Party politics is like a football team. During training camp, players are competing with each other to see who makes the team and who gets cut, who will be starting quarterback and who will ride the bench. Once camp is over and the season begins, it’s time to focus on beating the other teams rather than each other. Or, as former Virginia legislator Nick Freitas put it:
You punish bad Republicans in the primaries.
You vote to save the country from leftists in the general.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
For many years, the old Republican establishment demanded that candidates follow this rule. After Pat Buchanan unsuccessfully challenged President George H. W. Bush in 1992, he took the stage at the GOP convention in Houston to give Bush his full support. When Mitt Romney won the 2012 Republican nomination, party leaders demanded that Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich get in line and support the party’s nominee.
Yet something changed in 2016. When the nominee wasn’t a Romney, Jeb Bush, or John Kasich, as party leaders seemed to want, but instead Donald Trump, those same party leaders decided they would rather burn the party down than support someone they detested. The so-called NeverTrump movement led many formerly Republican stalwarts not only away from the party but into the arms of the Democrats. Kasich spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, while former House Republican Conference chair Liz Cheney endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024. The same pundits who demanded that Ron Paul supporters fall in line in 2012 sought to create a bulwark—literally, that’s what they called their blog—against Trump throughout his tenure.
That same strain of disloyalty appears in Idaho Republican politics as well. In 2022, then-Rep. Codi Galloway challenged Sen. Fred Martin, the chair of the Senate Health & Welfare Committee who supported lockdowns, masks, and vaccine mandates. Galloway won a close election, and rather than swallowing his pride and supporting the party’s nominee, Martin endorsed the Democrat in the race.
The same thing happened in the attorney general race that year, as “Republicans” like outgoing Sen. Patti Ann Lodge, former attorney general and Supreme Court justice Jim Jones, and former first lady Lori Otter all publicly endorsed Democrat Tom Arkoosh rather than Republican nominee Raúl Labrador. I wrote about these turncoats at the time:
These supposed Republicans are telling the people of Idaho that they are fine with outright socialism, with abortion on demand, with public schools grooming their students, with no transparency or accountability for taxpayer dollars. This is what Lori Otter, Patti Ann Lodge, Jim Jones, Fred Martin, Gary Raney, and Ben Ysursa support. Just as the Republican establishment of 2016 was deathly afraid of Donald Trump’s nationalism, so [too] do these career politicians fear Raúl Labrador’s plan to put the citizens of Idaho ahead of lobbies and other special interests.
These endorsements call into question everything these politicians did before. Now that we know that Fred Martin and Patti Ann Lodge are neither principled conservatives nor loyal Republicans, what do we make of their actions in the last legislative session when they blocked health freedom bills? Now that we know that Tommy Ahlquist supports left-wing extremists like Lauren McLean, then what can we determine about his motivation for staying in the 2018 gubernatorial primary?
How many more masks will drop in the coming years? What other political leaders who claim to be conservatives are really wolves in sheep’s clothing?
Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten any better. In 2024, young Colton Bennett lost a close three-way race to incumbent Republican Rep. Lori McCann in District 6. Bennett drew fire from some conservative activists for issuing a public statement of support for McCann following that primary. However, no good deed goes unpunished. In 2026, McCann abandoned her House seat to challenge Sen. Dan Foreman instead. She lost, and Bennett won the race for the now-open seat. Now that McCann’s political career is likely over, she too has dropped the mask and is viciously attacking Bennett on social media, attempting to smear him as a misogynist, despite what will likely be a very close contest with Democratic nominee Trish Carter-Goodheart.
So much for Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, right?
Of course, this phenomenon is not limited to one side of the Republican divide. Mark Fitzpatrick, who lost to Gov. Brad Little 58.96% to 28.79% in the May primary, has called upon the Idaho GOP to remove Little from the ballot for being a socialist:
Brad Little should be banned from calling himself a Republican.
He isn’t one.
@IdahoGOP could be pulling away rights to use the R from the fraudsters, but they don’t.
Ask why.
Seriously. Call the office and ask them why these socialists like Little and Guthrie are allowed to call themselves Republicans.
They are going to tell you to “vote Republican” on Nov 3rd.
What a joke.
Several replies to Fitzpatrick’s tweet asked what the alternative was, to which Mark replied, “There’s no realistic solution. Idaho might wake up a bit if the ‘Republican’ loses.”
Had Fitzpatrick won the May gubernatorial primary, he would surely have expected the Idaho GOP and other Republican elected officials to support his campaign. I suspect many would have considered him too controversial, however, and might have jumped ship either to former Supreme Court justice John Stegner’s independent campaign or even joined forces with the Democrats to stop him.
It makes one wonder what the point of a political party really is. Is it to work together for shared goals against a common foe? Or is it just a vehicle for individual political ambitions, to be used when convenient and discarded at a moment’s notice?
I have been extremely critical of Sen. Jim Guthrie, the chair of the Senate State Affairs Committee who unilaterally killed dozens of good bills that had passed the House over the past two sessions. I donated to his primary opponent and urged others to do the same. But he won, and barring a very unlikely series of events, he will return to the Senate for the 2027 session. Nothing I do will change that—no amount of kicking, screaming, or angry posting on social media will make any difference.
This is where political pragmatism comes into play. Guthrie, and others like him, will be in the Legislature for the next two years whether I like it or not. That means accomplishing my preferred policies requires working with them, or at least around them. I have limited time, energy, and political capital. Should I use it complaining about a done deal, or put it toward things I can actually change?
That is what Otto van Bismarck meant when he called politics “the art of the possible.” Do what you can, where you can, with the resources you have. None of us can go back in time and change the last election, but we can set ourselves up for the next one.
And there will be another election. All 105 legislators will be on the ballot in 2028, and we are likely to see openings for Congress, Senate, and the governor’s office in the next few years. Now is the time to recruit candidates, build networks, test the waters, and prepare the conservative bench. The men and women who will win the 2028 and 2030 primary elections are out there right now laying the groundwork for successful campaigns, not making a show of sour grapes on social media.
Ronald Reagan’s preferred candidate lost in a landslide in 1964. Rather than moping, Reagan mobilized and won two terms as California’s governor. In 1976, he challenged the president and lost. Rather than crashing out, he rebuilt his campaign and returned in 1980, winning two of the biggest landslides in American history and redefining Republican politics for generations to come. He did it by uniting the Republican Party rather than further fracturing it.
It’s something to consider for our situation today.
About Brian Almon
Brian Almon is the Editor of the Gem State Chronicle. He also serves as Chairman of the District 14 Republican Party and is a trustee of the Eagle Public Library Board. He lives with his wife and five children in Eagle.
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