Kansas --Daily KOS

[Demeter]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/10/13/231933/85

Kansas

by mcjoan

Maybe we are going to see a wave in November. Maybe even a tsumani. My friend Kate in Oneonta pointed me to this post which points to this editorial by Steve Rose in the Johnson County Sun in Overland Park, Kansas.


As we prepare ourselves to make political endorsements in subsequent issues, I can tell you unequivocally that this newspaper has never endorsed so many Democrats. Not even close.

In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper. In the old days, before the Republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional Republicans....

The point is, I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office.

This year, we will do something different. You will read why we are endorsing Kathleen Sebelius for governor and Mark Parkinson for lieutenant governor; Dennis Moore to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress; Paul Morrison for Kansas attorney general; and a slew of local Democratic state legislative candidates. These are not liberal Democrats. They are what fairly can be described as conservative Democrats, and we can prove that in our forthcoming endorsements.

But I could not help but put in perspective a more global phenomenon that has led us to re-evaluate our traditional support for Republicans....

The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

To win a Republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

What does to-the-right mean?

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti-stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education....

But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.

[RufusEarl]

1. Well he gets it !!

[lyonn]

2. This impresses me, the press in Kansas!

They are longing for the old established ways of our govt. Good public schools, keeping religion out of schools, global warming, rights of "the people" (Habeas Corpus), on and on.

Then there is the fact that you cannot believe what your govt. is telling you------- faulty intel., signing laws then issuing, secretly, signing statements giving pres. ability to ignore those laws?, etc.

[tridim]

3. My first job was delivering that paper

My Repuke parents in Kansas City probably had a hissy fit when they read that. Their Republican world is crumbling all around them. :) :) :)

[beltanefauve]

4. The demographics are changing too

Young, lifelong California families are discouraged with housing prices and are moving there, and other states in the midwest. (One of my best friends and her family just did.) Latinos are working in the meat-packing plants in Nebraska and on the farms. I suspect the political landscape of these traditional Repub strongholds will be transformed.