Gov. Phil Scott couldn’t act fast enough to distance himself from newly-disgraced state Sen. Samuel Douglass. Within hours of a Politico report that identified Douglass as an active participant in a racist, misogynist, anti-Semitic Young Republican group chat that reads like a bunch of adolescent boys trying to out-gross each other, Scott had called for Douglass’ resignation — along with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders.

That’s nice, but Douglass’ politics have been obvious for years. His extreme views were out there for anyone to find, long before our “moderate” governor lent his support to Douglass’ 2024 campaign, long before Scott’s buddies in the Burlington-area business community dumped tens of thousands of dollars into Douglass’ campaign treasury.

Scott must have known what kind of person he was endorsing. Unless he pulled a Sergeant Schultz because he needed Douglass-style Republicans to win elections and eat into Democratic majorities.

I know this because, as far back as 2022, I wrote about Douglass’ extreme views. My post wasn’t based on any deep investigative dives; it was the product of simple searches of social media and YouTube. It was all out there for anyone to find. Too bad no one in political authority or our news media bothered to look. Until Politico gift-wrapped the story and dumped it in our collective laps. Now, suddenly, everyone is paying attention.

A sampling of Sam Douglass’ political wisdom as I’ve described it: He thinks Fox News is “too liberal” and prefers Newsmax, he labeled Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal “justice,” and he saw mask mandates and Covid vaccines as a plot to “impos[e] tyranny.” That’s what Phil Scott called a “common sense candidate.”

As of this writing, Douglass has ducked any and all inquiries from the press. But doubtless he’ll see the writing on the wall and get out while the getting’s good. I’d still wonder if he will retain his post as head of the Vermont Young Republicans. Speaking of which, apparently Scott aide Jason Maulucci has joined his boss in making a hasty tactical retreat.

But I digress. The real point is, if Scott is serious about purging the most radical elements of his own Vermont Republican Party, Sam Douglass is the first of many steps he will have to take. I mean, we’ve heard from top Republican elected officials, but has anyone in the VTGOP uttered a word? Not as far as I can tell.

In fact, as Vermont Public’s Peter Hirschfeld reported, “Last week, Douglass was one of six Republican lawmakers nominated for ‘Legislator of the Year’ at the Vermont GOP’s Awards Night in South Burlington.” So, Phil Scott’s political party sees Sam Douglass as the beau ideal of a Republican lawmaker. Or did so until today. Maybe still does.

Quite a few Douglass-style candidates have been featured on Republican ballots in recent cycles because, well, many of the local and county party organizations are full of extreme conservatives who wouldn’t countenance an actual moderate on their tickets. Like it or not, the far right is the only place you can find Republican energy and activism these days.

If you want to take a long stroll down memory lane, feel free to type “Stealth Conservatives” into this blog’s search box. Most of the entries are from 2020 and 2022 because, honestly, there were too many suspects and too little time for me to do much digging around during the 2024 cycle. (Also, I had a really bad case of Covid that knocked me out for all of August and half of September last year.) But a few of them, who’d been losers in earlier rounds, actually won in 2024 because of a wave of anti-tax sentiment and a concerted effort by our “moderate” governor and his friends to get more Republicans into the Statehouse.

For example, Rep. Rob North, seen here with guess who.

North, as I wrote in October 2022, was “an active member of a far-right evangelical denomination that bars women from church leadership, prohibits divorce, and believes the Earth is 6,000 years old.” Before he became a candidate, he sent emails to sitting legislators urging them to vote “No” on Proposition 5, the reproductive-rights amendment that won overwhelming support at the ballot box. And in 2024, the year Phil Scott endorsed this guy, I found a video of a sermon North delivered in which he outed himself as a very fringey Christian nationalist type.

I haven’t gathered receipts for many of North’s caucus-mates because there’s just not enough time. But they’re definitely out there, and our news media has done little to nothing to explore their records. Campaign coverage tends to accept candidate’s statements at face value and rarely digs — at all — into their social or online media histories. It should be a standard part of service journalism: Let the voters know, not just what a candidate might want them to know, but as much as possible about who these people really are and what they stand for.

If they’d done their jobs last year, or if Phil Scott really gave a damn about erasing extremism from his own party, then we wouldn’t have needed a Politico scoop to reveal the truth about just one of these wingnuts.

Maybe now we’ll get some real reporting on the other stealth conservatives in the Legislature. Not holding my breath, though.