With what he calls a joking political announcement, Larry Grant has gotten ample attention.

I also think Grant managed to get his points across — about the Idaho Republican Party and about 1st District Rep. Walt Minnick.

Grant floated a made-for-punditry proposition recently: the idea of running again for Congress, but this time as a Republican. The 2006 Democratic nominee told the Statesman's Rocky Barker that he could win by cobbling together an alliance of moderate Republicans and Democrats who are disenchanted by the incumbent Minnick, their party's de facto standard-bearer.

“All I need is 35 percent,” Grant said.

But after Barker ran with the story, Grant backpedaled. When the story got the notice of Congressional Quarterly, Grant said he had no interest in running again — as either a Democrat or a Republican. Grant said he was just trying to point out that moderate Republicans have no choices in the 2010 1st District primary.

State Democratic Party Chairman Keith Roark joined in the damage control. "(Grant's) comment was clearly intended to be humorous and ironic," Roark said in a post at Randy Stapilus' blog on regional politics.

Grant has a point about the GOP primary. Iraq War veteran Vaughn Ward and Eagle state Rep. Raul Labrador will court the party's conservative voters — and if former Rep. Bill Sali runs, the race will take another hard swing to the right. There's no home for moderates in this primary — but then again, GOP primaries tend to draw conservative voters who support candidates such as Sali.

More telling, then, is what Grant said about Minnick, who was elected in 2008. Grant, who ran briefly for the Democrats' 2008 nomination, said he gets approached weekly by Democrats who'd like to see him challenge Minnick. I can't imagine the Minnick camp was glad to see that news in the blogs.

Yes, Grant said the right things about party unity in his CQ interview. "Walt's walking a very fine line in this state. The Democratic base is not particularly large, but they're pretty active ... and a lot of those core people are not happy with his votes." But that fact that some of these dissatisfied Democrats have approached Grant is no joking matter to Minnick, or to his party.

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