Kansas "What's the Matter With Sam Brownback?" Everything!

[RKP5637]

Excellent historic synopsis of how far Kansas has fallen under TPTB currently in Kansas and how/why. I was surprised about some of the latter comments about Paul Davis, running against Brownback for gov.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/sam-brownback-kansas-paul-davis

ONE WEDNESDAY afternoon in mid-August, Govs. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Chris Christie of New Jersey stopped for a photo op—and $54 worth of pork ribs and sausages—at Oklahoma Joe's, a gas station barbecue joint on the outer fringe of Kansas City. Along with hickory smoke and diesel fumes, there was a mild aroma of desperation in the air. Brownback's approval ratings hovered in the mid-30s, and one recent poll had his Democratic opponent, state House Minority Leader Paul Davis, beating him by 10 points. Now Christie, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, had parachuted in to lend some star power as Brownback made a fundraising swing through the wealthy suburbs outside of Kansas City. A day earlier, the RGA had announced a $600,000 ad buy in support of Brownback. "We believe in Sam," Christie assured the scrum of reporters who'd accompanied the governors to Oklahoma Joe's.

Early in his tenure, he said he wanted to turn Kansas into a "real, live experiment" for right-wing policies. In some cases relying on proposals promoted by the Kansas Policy Institute—a conservative think tank that belongs to the Koch-backed State Policy Network and is chaired by a former top aide to Charles Koch—Brownback led the charge to privatize Medicaid, curb the power of teachers' unions, and cull thousands from the welfare rolls.

Conservatives once celebrated Brownback's grand tax experiment as a prototype worthy of replication in other states and lauded Brownback himself as a model conservative reformer ("phenomenal," Grover Norquist has said). "My focus," Brownback said in one 2013 interview, "is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.'" By this fall it was hard to imagine anyone touting the Brownback model, especially with the Kansas governor at risk of going down in defeat—in the Koch brothers' backyard, no less—and dragging the entire state ticket down with him. The Wall Street Journal recently dubbed Brownback's approach "more of a warning than a beacon."

It's not just Brownback. The mood of the electorate has soured to the point where three-term GOP Sen. Pat Roberts is trailing his challenger, independent Greg Orman. And Schodorf is running neck and neck with her Republican rival, Kris Kobach. In the end, Brownback's red-state experiment may wind up turning this GOP stronghold purple.

Johnson County is hardly the first place you'd envision as the epicenter of anti-Brownback organizing. These well-to-do suburbs of Kansas City constitute 20 percent of the state's population. The entire slate of 34 state senators and representatives from the county are Republican, save for three Democrats. The region actually has a longer streak than the entire state in terms of voting against national Democrats: the last to win a majority in the county was Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. Brownback won here with 63 percent of the vote in 2010.

Despite trailing in nearly every poll this year, Brownback may still hang on. Paul Davis has run a campaign whose slogan essentially boils down to "I'm Not Sam Brownback." His campaign is scant on policy details, and he turned down my repeated interview requests. Should he defeat Brownback, he'll face a fiscal crisis starting day one. "If he wins, he's going to have the worst two years in history," Loomis says. Of course, the same is true for Brownback.

[MuseRider]

1. I saw that picture yesterday

and I have not stopped giggling every time I see it since then.

Torches and Disc Harrows (?) <----Since I don't do that kind of farming my knowledge of the equipment used is lacking but it looks like a disc harrow to me.

So many articles, so little time. I absolutely love the story of Sam the Jesus man needing his state to auction off porn and sex toys to keep us afloat. How delicious is that?

Ahhh Ahhhh Kansas! The land of Ahhhhhhs.

[RKP5637]

2. I'm so happy to see so many Kansans waking up to what these critters are all about! Hopefully,

they will run them out of office!

[MuseRider]

3. That clip about Davis

is exactly why I think he may lose.

He says nothing and Jill, who is bright and an incredibly good speaker with a ton of ideas, has apparently been shoved aside and gagged. Davis is a coward so far, sadly. He will not commit to anything unless he sees it is already approved.

Anti Brownback may not be enough here. Even if Davis wins nothing good will get done. Our legislature may take a decade to change, holy cow you KNOW what they are up to and the Koch brothers will be sitting in the Senate presidents office often enough before those big votes to hand out the cash and threats. (that really makes me so angry I could slap someone who should know better than to allow that)

I can't get too excited either way. It would be fun to see Brownback put in his place, it would be great to see Roberts go. We now have a national presence of Republican strategists and I can't remember the Democrats ever being here like that so go figure. It will be hard to beat these guys money wise and strategy wise but we do have some very smart locals (the people who actually did the work to get Taylor to quit) who may shake things up. We can only hope. When you are such a minority and deal with a demographic with a voting record like we have with JC having 20% of the population it would be hard even with national support. We are spread mighty thin and Sam was a farm boy doncha know.

[RKP5637]

9. It's a shame about Davis. I had not realized that before. n/t

[MuseRider]

11. There are others who think differently

this is just my opinion.

I really should stop. We have two choices really. Being in Kansas that is a good thing, many times there are not.

What I say, what my experience has been in any of this really does not matter.

If I did not have to live here and watch so many friends suffer from all of this, myself included but not nearly as much as it would be if I were younger, I would say let it burn. Like someone suggested, let it go. Let them have it and see where it ends up. We all know that it could and would get much worse before some of these knuckleheads would wake up.

Give Sam another 4 years and we will be up for sale. Welcome to the Union Kochistan! We may as well, they own us now anyway.

LOL I just read down the thread and see you said as much!! LOL!

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. Brownback has been a disaster for Kansas.

The KC Star just has one editorial after another on the mess that he has created.

I really hope the independent he is running against wins. So far it looks like Brownback is behind.

Kansas people tend to be conservative. Lots of them are farm people. But I just can't believe they are as far to the right as this administration is. Especially the people in Johnson County. They are Republican but not right wing.

[RKP5637]

7. JC always seemed sort of moderate. Many in rural KS are naive, I think, and they vote out of habit,

and because that's what mom and dad it, and the preacher says to do. In JC they want to protect their money. Someone once described JC republicans as moderate country club republicans ... seems pretty good description IMO. There are many very nice people in KS, but they get propagandized so much.

[leftyladyfrommo]

14. A lot of the people in JC are very highly educated.

And they hold high level kind of jobs. And they pay a lot of attention to what's going on.

So many rural people just aren't that into politics. They have other priorities.

[RKP5637]

15. Yes, quite true!!! For many, their first priority is survival IMO! n/t

[Blue_Adept]

5. Honestly, Democrats should not run in this

Something like this, they just need to step out of the way and let the Republicans run unopposed. Let them drive it further into the shitter. Because all that happens is if anyone else wins, they spend a few years cleaning it up and getting everything back on track again with a ton of opposition and vitriol against them, and then they get booted out of office to do it again.

It's unfortunate, but it feels like it really needs a catastrophic bottom-hitting event for people to get it through their heads what's wrong. But at the same time, that constant 28% of the electorate that will always vote Republican will never realize what's going on and just make it worse.

I'd just wipe my hands of it and move on elsewhere in terms of politics when it comes to Kansas. Let it be a blight and constant example of what the GOP wants to do everywhere.

[RKP5637]

8. Yep, I think what you say makes a lot of sense, let the republicans wallow in the mess they created

for another gov. term. If Davis wins, he'll inheriting such a mess it will be hard to dig out of it ... and the Koch republican machine will blame him for everything. Exactly as you say, then he would be out the next election and then they can change the name of KS to Kochland. It is just absolutely a horrible mess of a state.

[SheilaT]

6. Thanks for the link.

Good article. I lived in Kansas for 18 years (1990-2008)in Overland Park, which is by and large a more moderate to liberal part of the state.

One huge problem with the state is mentioned in the article, the fact that if you're born there you're supposed to be a Republican automatically. Which means far to many Kansans simply vote for the candidate with the R after the name, rather than learning anything at all about what's going on. And many of them simply don't understand how vastly different the Republican Party is from what it was even, ten years ago, let ago fifty or more.

The other big problem, and the reason Dems will lose races they really ought to win this year, is that they almost never put in front of the voters the carnage that the Republicans have brought about. Such as, in this case with Kansas, the very real defunding of public schools. On a national level the success of the ACA should be front and center. There should be many ads showing someone who finally has health care and can now get treated for some disease. Stories like that. But I don't think we're seeing them.

Here in New Mexico we have a terrible Democratic candidate for Governor, and by terrible I mean he has no money, does not seem to be campaigning anywhere, and is the candidate only because in a five-way primary he had name recognition because his father was governor in the early 1990's. Our current Governor, Susanna Martinez, is widely despised at least in northern New Mexico where I live, and a good state-wide campaign against her would focus on how she's gutted education, and how here Secretary of Education, Hanna Skandera, one of those with zero background in education to begin with and imported here from Florida, has never been confirmed in that position. Lots of other state-wide issues, mainly connected to Martinez's cuddling up to big businesses like WalMart, could be used, but as noted above, the Dem has no money and Dems in general do not do a very good job of running on the issues.

[RKP5637]

10. Yep, I think just about all of JC is more moderate than the rest of the state except the Lawrence

area, of course. That's what I think too, many are republican robots, they just auto-vote republican. And then as someone once told me, many think they are voting for Eisenhower type republicans, not getting what the republican party has morphed into today.

[SheilaT]

12. Actually, southern Johnson County

is a Heart of Darkness. Huge fundamentalist churches. Lots of home schoolers. It had gotten scary by the time I moved away.

[RKP5637]

13. Ohhh, that is right! I had forgotten! I think Gardner, Kansas is pretty conservative, for just

one example. Olathe was certainly not moderate.

[leftyladyfrommo]

16. Aren't the Nazarines big out there?

Is it Olathe where they have their campus. Yea. There a lot of mega churches out that way. You are absolutely right.