With the legislative session coming to a close, I thought it appropriate to pause and reflect. In March, Bill articulated some frustrations with our party-
"Kansas is arguable one of the most conservative and Republican states in the country. However, we have a D Governor, two D Congressmen and, despite majorities in both the State House and the Senate, we can't get any legislation through... Part of the blame falls on Speaker Neufeld and Senate President, Stephen Morris. Under their leadership, petty inter-party squabbles... have been very damaging... Moreover, time and time again, both Senate and House Republicans will pass two similar bills, but their refusal to grant the other chamber a "victory" makes for childish gridlock where nothing gets accomplished.
We also have countless legislators who waste time, energy and money introducing legislation that has no living chance of becoming law... On gay marriage, National Guard insurance, fetal alcohol syndrome programs, indecency legislation... the two Republican-held chambers often support similar legislation but it goes nowhere....We need statehouse leadership with skill, humility and a sincere interest in getting the job done."
I think it's safe to say we haven't moved all that much from where we were last year. Sebelius manges to coopt issues that she actively opposed in the same session and remains well-liked; Hyperion is a lost cause; Neufeld and Morris showcased their leadership with attrition votes on Holcomb (which failed); the Kline-obsessed so-cons continue to run around like chickens with their heads chopped off; the bitter primary in the 2nd could blow our chances at defeating Boyda; we aren't nearly as excited with our presidential candidate as Dems are; and we continue to allow lunatics like Ben Hodge & Dale Swenson pretend they're allowed to join civilized folks on the playground.
While I believe 2006 was the bottom of the barrel- (the nasty Barnett, Jennison, Canfield primary, the subsequent Sebelius victory, the augmentation of Kline's radioactivity and most notably, the mystifying Ryun loss), our party still lacks serious discipline and leadership. We haven't been able to box-in Sebelius, despite the fact that she's made bad moves (Holcomb, Tillergate, etc) and she's clearly more interested in building a national reputation among Democrats than independent, average Kansans.
I would hope Kansas Republicans could take this opportunity to reassess their priorities and reflect on what needs to be done to move the ball forward on the issues, economic development, education reform, job growth, family values, transparency in Topeka, etc., that we clearly have a policy edge on. I pray that next year I won't be saying the same thing. But please don't expect me to hold my breath.
Friday, May 30, 2008
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21 comments:
While it's hard to take seriously any post after "Baby Tartare," this is actually a good assessment and grounds for discussion if we can keep Wyatt in the closet.
One of the key issues is what conservative means. Statewide elections have shown that Kansas is a slightly right of center state and that, despite Republican registration advantage, we can only win with moderate Republicans and independents on board. Almost all Republicans are fiscally conservative at heart but not such that they will abandon people in need or education. Common ground can be found here easily. The constant insertion of abortion politics always gets in the way. We will be back on top only if the majority of Republicans find a way to marginalize the Kline, Kinzer, Huelscamp, etc. wing and if we realize that legislative leadership needs to have a positive and articulate face; the grumpy old guy look always hurts us.
I don't necessarily agree with you that abortion needs to be left at the door.
A transparency bill that requires the Governor to detail who she hosts at her home, particularly if any proxy fundraising is involved, is effectively pro-life legislation with cross-over appeal. I also think it's a question of who introduces the legislation.
If we had a female legislator introduce a reasonable abortion regulation bill, say, alongside 2 young woman who are suffering from psychological problems because they were rifled to an abortion clinic at 16 years-old without discussing the issue with anyone, I think we could win over folks. But having Kinzer, Huelskamp or some other notoriously negative/ grumpy legislator run the field with the bill, well, you got me there.
All in all, it isn't just the substance of bills that we are weak on, often times they are okay, we are just miserable at packaging them in a palatable manner.
I'd encourage you not to confuse Wyatt's actions with my own.
-Thanks.
It's not just abortion politics, it's God politics. Some of the social conservatives feel they are "more" Christian than the moderates and even other conservatives.
I don't say that just to be snide. It's an unfortunate truth in Kansas politics. The abortion debate could go away tomorrow and there would still be a deep division in the Republican Party in Kansas.
Tim Huelskamp's policy choices are all faith based. Granted, he doesn't make many public professions to that effect, but any prolonged conversation with him makes it clear. On the other hand, Judy Morrison was screaming at people in the House this year that NAFTA and immigration are God's issues.
To many of these people if you oppose them you also oppose God. (Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it.) But it doesn't stop there, the divisions continue within the "holier than thou" set. Some conservative legislators would believe that Huelskamp isn't really saved because he's Catholic. And the divisions and back biting continues, etc, etc. The need to feel superior by some of these people borders on psychotic.
So while it would be great to rid the Party of the divisive nature of abortion politics, that vaccuum would easily be filled by other issues. Can we get around that? Probably not. Can we deal with it? Well, maybe.
Could we elect better quality legislators? You bet.
How? On that I'm stumped. Better pay maybe? I dunno.
The Party is a shell of it's former self. Candidates don't have to rely on it as they once did. I don't see that changing anytime soon. So in a way this is all academic, but the argument is an interesting one.
It's just a question of discipline. These folks have no ability to prioritize issues. It's go nowhere social conservative legislation at the expense of Holcomb, etc.
There's no need for that.
No, it is abortion politics that is killing us. As long as Roe v. Wade remains the law, very little can be done legislatively to significantly reduce or eliminate abortions. All of these silly, "around the edges" bills are really not designed to reduce abortions. They are nuisance bills designed to get financial support for and from right-to-life groups and nearly everyone in Topeka (except Kinzer and Huelscamp) knows this and acknowledges it. These are simply "postcard" bills and people are getting pretty sick of them. Even Mary Kay Culp of KFL will acknowledge, privately, that their support is based primarily on conservative positions more than on abortion votes.
The Tiller event is a great example. We needed a respected articulate female Republican legislator to strongly criticize Sebelius for poor judgement in attending the event while litigation/investigation was underway. What we got was Huelscamp and Kinzer announcing they might introduce a bill to prohibit Cedar Crest from being used for charitable events. That's what most readers, who don't know who Tiller is, got and it sounds juvenile. The issue wasn't Tiller at Cedar Crest - he apparently did win the bid. The problem was that Sebelius should have stayed away while litigation was pending. That's the issue we could have nailed her on not Operation Rescue's goofy "lavish" entertainment statement. I guess $25 is big money to these poeple. Probem is most of our more thoughtful and articulat female legislators are mods and the boys running the legislature and party don't want a woman or a mod near a position of power or a microphone.
the folks the who run this blog should be ashamed of themselves..take down the offensive picture and move on to smart, articulate posts...and never let the person who posted the doctored pictures post again.
i'm a republican, and it's childish things like that that help Democrats win in places like kansas.
The fundraising point is the crux of the issue. KFL, AFP, unions, Sierra Club, KNEA, all of them will be using votes from this session to send out "urgent" fundraising letters.
Would this change if the parties were stronger and raised more money?
We probably won't find out, that bridge has been crossed and burned. Special interest groups will not giver up their fundraising power without a fight
No problem here with pointing out our D governor's coziness with abortionists. This would be old news to everyone if we had a competent press corps. But we don't so we need to keep it up on blogs like this.
We've been way too willing to look away from a lot of things (like Steve Morris has a very partisan Democrat on his payroll)and blame conservatives when it's the moderates who get rolled whenever the going gets even remotely tough.
the problem is crazy lke this blog spewed for the last several days turns voters off that would otherwise support republicans.
people want small government, people want to be left alone, and, for the most part, that means they want the government to totally butt out of their lives.
This blog is in denial. They want to blame Neufeld or Morris or some other minor political figure for the GOP's problems. They are ignoring the facts. The reason why the Republican Party is in the toilet is because the GOP cannot deliver on it's promises. The GOP has simply failed at governing.
Look at what the GOP promises compared to what the GOP delivers.
Small government - Actually, the federal bureaucracy grew more under this administration than any other administration in a century. The federal government got bigger under Bush than it did under FDR at the height of the New Deal.
Less intrusive government - There has been a significant rollback of civil liberties in the last eight years.
Fiscal responsibility - We haven't balanced a budget since the GOP took over. The war in Iraq was supposed to cost $50 billion ... it's going to really cost $6 trillion. Pork spending reached all-time record highs under Republican rule.
Good for business - Housing crisis, credit crisis, energy crisis, inflation, currency devaluation, etc., etc.
Strong on national defense - We're going to lose the war in Iraq. The whole deal was based on the biggest intel screwup in world history.
Family values - There's actually a decrease in national church attendance. Young people are less likely to believe in God than at any time in US history. Divorce rates are up. Ironically, divorce rates are highest among Evangelicals - the GOP's base.
So ... TKR, tell us ... where has the GOP actually been succesful? Face the facts, the Republican Party had their shot ... and the failed miserably.
The state party met in near secret this weekend to select delegates to the convention and to modify the platform. The platform reads like it was written by Kobach and AFP and while it somewhat backs off abortion, it remains something that a lot of Republicans want kept in a drawer someplace. Kobach's anti-immigration positions were added despite the fact that conservatives were told by their business supporters to back off and they did. So much for financial support for the party. AFP got its TABOR stuff in despite the fact that it gets nowhere in a Republican dominated legislature. There is a huge disconnect now between the party and a substantial majority of Republican legislators. That will do us no good in November.
The earlier poster is correct. The real problem with the Republicans has nothing to do with Topeka. It has everything to do with George W. Bush. You cannot be successful at the state level if the voters are angry at Republicans at the national level. The Bush fiasco will haunt the GOP, at all levels, for the next several years just the way that the memory of the Jimmy Carter administratiion hurt Democrats throughout the 80s.
Nice to see that the KDP and Daily Kos posters are still signing on. They're hatred of Bush will blind them to who and what voters will really vote for. They're worship of Obama will only lead to confusion when voters decide not to go with an untested snot who's policies are just the same old liberal backwash.
We Republicans have our problems, sure enough. McCain may not be the perfect candidate. But once the public sees what little there is really there with Obama, Saint Barrack will go the way of Gore, Kerry, and Mondale.
Oh, I do appreciate Obama putting that shrew in her place, though.
Unfortunately, these comments about the national GOP are absolutely correct. It's impossible to rebuild the party in Kansas so long as Bush and the national Republicans are below 30% approval. To most voters, national politics completely overshadows state politics. Most voters cannot name a state senator, or even explain how state government operates. They associate all Republicans with Bush. So long as Bush's numbers are in the toilet, all Republicans will suffer.
Bush administration betrayed GOP values. Vote for Libertarian Bob Barr ... the only true conservative candidate for President.
the GOP cannot recover until the Iraq war is over. too many people are upset over Iraq. until that issue goes away, republicans will be unable to talk about other issues.
Any rationale Republican, conservative or moderate, recognizes what a disaster Bush is for us and for the country. Sending too few troops, not properly armed or prepared, to war based on false intelligence simply is not defensible. What would we say if a Dem had done that? We need to get Bush out of office and out of the headlines before we can really repair our brand. McCain is our hope; he is the perfect candidate for us this year.
Bush is possibly the worst President in US history. The Republican Party should be ashamed of itself for the problems that they have caused this nation. We've literally set our country back an entire generation. We'll be paying for Bush's mistakes for decades to come.
I'm a lifelong Republican, but I expect my fellow Republicans to always do what is best for the nation. When we have a President leading the country down the wrong track, I expect my Republican elected officials to set aside partisan loyalties and stand firm on behalf of the people. Most Republicans have not taken a stand against Bush. For that reason, they deserve to get beat. I cannot support any elected official who has supported the Bush administration.
"The Kansas Republican Party - A Time for Reflection"
that's the wrong headline
try:
"The Kansas Republican Party - A Time to Die"
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