Let me say up front that I know Steve Rose. I used to live in Northeast Johnson County, just as Steve does, and we were members of the same synagogue. We have grudging respect for one another's politics, because neither of us are knee-jerk, rabid or overly partisan. We stray right and left of center by more or less the same number of degrees.
...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. That is, we happily endorsed Jan Meyers for Congress, Bob Dole for U.S. Senate, Nancy Kassebaum for U.S. Senate; virtually every Republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative Democrats George and Bob Docking and John Carlin.As I said, this is significant. Kansas is a microcosm of what is happening nationwide as the Republican party rends itself assunder on scandal after scandal, and the voters stop buying the bullshit.
...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.
...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.
The religious right woke up a couple of mornings back wondering where they were, how they got there, why their asses hurt and who took their clothes.
