MINOT — North Dakota's Republican Party has become so big that our state's partisan divide is now within the party.

Literally.

This week, a group of far-right activists launched what amounts to a new political party that will operate within the NDGOP. Calling themselves "The Freedom League" (an ironic name, given the group's support for book bans in its inaugural press release), this organization will seek to promote populist candidates within the NDGOP's endorsement process.

Candidates who diverge significantly, as a matter of style and substance, from the traditional conservatives who have been at the center of the NDGOP's last three decades of electoral dominance. Keep in mind that it's this same faction that hopes to censure Gov. Kelly Armstrong later this month at the NDGOP's reo

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