The more he runs off at the mouth, the more Idahoans learn about wannabe Republican governor Rex Rammell.
First, he's proven he doesn't know the difference between a genuine joke and utterly bad taste.
Now they learn he lacks the level-headed temperament to hold high office.
The eastern Idaho elk rancher, whose political ambitions exceed his skills, made national news by offering at a Twin Falls Republican picnic to buy "Obama tags" while discussing hunting wolves. "Obama tags" were interpreted to be permits for hunting President Obama. Rammell waved off his remark as a "joke."
Unable to appreciate why a flippant remark hinting at assassination created such a ruckus, Rammell kept talking.
The controversy, he boasted cheerily, was a "boon" to his campaign to become Idaho governor, suggesting he's finding support among fringe voters with a taste for dark wisecracks linking the black U.S. president to hunting.
Finally, desperate to climb out of a deepening hole, Rammell claimed at a Tuesday press conference that an anonymous caller had warned that Gov. Butch Otter is out to "destroy" him, and Idaho's senior Republican establishment has denounced him because they're "worried about losing their power"—presumably to Rammell.
For good measure, Rammell also reached into the past and insisted former Gov. Phil Batt should be "jailed" for allowing reintroduction of wolves into Idaho by the federal government in the 1990s. None of which had to do with his "joke."
Then there was the phone call Rammell said he received from the CIA ... .
