Kansas GOP Candidates Migrate to Democratic Ticket

When one thinks of progressive politics in America, the State of Kansas does not spring immediately to mind. It is a hotbed of social rest that exists comfortably between Nebraska and Oklahoma, a buffer state that plays basketball sandwiched between two football playing powerhouses. So when Republicans in Kansas start running for office as Democrats, as nine have done this year, one ought to take a closer look.

First, though, it is important to understand that there are three main factions in the big tent of the Republican Party: the libertarian, small government crew, the Corporate Socialists (who want subsidies, tax-cuts and assorted welfare programs for themselves and Darwinian capitalism for their workers), and the reactionary Christians. Each of these may object to the label applied here, but no one will dispute that the GOP has factions whose agendas no longer mesh. Big government contracts for businesses offend the small-is-better Jeffersonians, while any government that allows abortion offends the sensibilities of the churchgoing faithful. Yet a great many libertarians believe government has no place in a woman’s womb, while Wall Street is happy to sell the morning-after pill as an over-the-counter drug.

In the heydays of Reagan and the warm afterglow of Bush the Elder, all three could put their differences aside because the levers of government were new and exciting after the long Democratic dominance of the New Deal and Post-War years. There were ideas to be tried, and pet projects to implement. A quarter of a century later, a lot of ideas have run their course, and now, in Kansas and elsewhere, the GOP’s fissures are growing.

Mark Parkinson, a former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, left the GOP to run for lieutenant governor with the popular Democratic Governor Katherine Sebelius (Kansas voters have that western streak of independence that lets them vote for the person rather than the party with a clear conscience). He explained, “I’d reached a breaking point. I want to work on relevant issues and not on a lot of things that don’t matter.” The Johnson County Sun, as Republican a paper as there is, decided to endorse virtually the entire Democratic slate this year. Publisher Steve Ross wrote in a recent column cited by the Washington Post’s Peter Slevin, “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.” That’s strong language from the state that gave America President Eisenhower.

Ron Freeman, executive director of the Kansas GOP, however, told Mr. Slevin that this is “a simple case of political opportunism.. It’s really more about them than it is about the party. They obviously feel the Democratic Party is weak enough that, without any history in the party, they can be front-runners in the party.” That is an incredibly powerful point and insight. Yet, what will it say about his side if it loses to such candidates and such a party?

As the conservative coalition comes under pressure, it will not necessarily shatter. Instead, one faction will decide, like Achilles, to sulk in its tent, or perhaps, switch sides a bit without going over to the Democrats en mass. The only thing preventing a third-party from doing well at the moment is the fact that the 2006 election is a mid-term, without a presidential candidate to be the rallying point for the autumn of discontent that the country feels.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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