ET TU KANSAS?

Moderates and even mainstream conservatives are abandoning the BushCheney brand of radical far right politics by the boatload-- even in Kansas! DWT has been watching developments there, as more and more Republicans switch party affiliation and leave the GOP to a wild bunch of religionist kooks and neo-Nazi/KKK fanatics. Today Peter Slevin has opened the topic up at the Washington Post. Despite Rove's bravado at the Moonie Times yesterday, all's not so rosy for the GOP, even in their own heartland.

Slevin starts with the story of Kansas' next Attorney General, Paul Morrison, "a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, [who] has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general-- as a Democrat. He is now running neck-and-neck with Republican Phill Kline, an iconic social conservative who made headlines by seeking the names of abortion-clinic patients and vowing to defend science-teaching standards that challenge Darwinian evolution. What's more, Morrison is raising money faster than Kline and pulling more cash from Republicans than Democrats."

Kansas, one of the most consistently Republican states in the country, already has a wildly popular Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and now 9 ex-Repugs are running as Democrats, including the former Chairman of the GOP, a candidate for lieutenant governor. Although Kansans haven't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the Great Depression, there is a conservative Democrat in the House, Dennis Moore. A friend of mine at the DCCC tipped me off that longshot challenger to far right whacko Jim Ryun, Nancy Boyda is running so strongly in Topeka that it looks like she may actually topple the bribe-taking Ryun on November 7.

In fact, Kansas is one of the few places the troglodyte head of the DCCC, Rahm Emanuel, understand Howard Dean's brilliant, forward-looking 50 state strategy. "The Democratic National Committee is spending money and sending staff to Kansas as part of Chairman Howard Dean's much-debated 50-state strategy of extending the party's influence in unlikely places. The DNC will not reveal its spending or the size of the staff, but a spokesman said the infusion permits a statewide organizing effort not possible before." With every poll predicting massive Democratic wins-- and electronic vote stealing the only possible way the GOP can save itself from the disaster it has earned-- even Kansans understand what BushCheneyRove is all about.