DISINTEGRATING GOP EVEN RUNNING INTO TROUBLE IN KANSAS

Even Kansas could be in play this year

It has been hard to miss all the Republican doomsaying and hand-ringing lately-- from Newt Gingrich to the hapless congressional jerkoffs-- who still insist that they disastrous and repeatedly failed, racist strategy of trying to tie Democrats to Jeremiah Wright is the only way to go (Go! Go! Go!)-- to the hack Republican pundits like John Fund and Peggy Noonan:

The Democrats aren't the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they're finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They're busy being born.

The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They're frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.

The headline Wednesday on Drudge, from Politico, said, "Republicans Stunned by Loss in Mississippi." It was about the eight-point drubbing the Democrat gave the Republican in the special House election. My first thought was: You have to be stupid to be stunned by that. Second thought: Most party leaders in Washington are stupid-- detached, played out, stuck in the wisdom they learned when they were coming up, in '78 or '82 or '94. Whatever they learned then, they think pertains now. In politics especially, the first lesson sticks. For Richard Nixon, everything came back to Alger Hiss.

But even with all this I had to laugh today when I read that even the Kansas Senate seat held by ultimate Bush rubber stamp extraordinaire, Pat Roberts, could be in jeopardy. Lately we've been looking at the 1936 election that left 88 Republicans in the House and only 16 in the U.S. Senate. Of the 16 left in the Senate, one was Arthur Cropper (an ex-Kansas governor who served 5 senate terms starting in 1918), who won re-election against Democrat Omar Ketchum. Cropper won re-election as one of the few Republicans who refused to participate in obstructing FDR's New Deal and, in fact, supported FDR over and over. Roberts, on the other hand, can claim to have enthusiastically participated in every McConnell obstructionist initiative since the voters defeated half a dozen of his fellow Republicans in 2006.

But even if Slattery, an ex-congressman, can't beat evolution-denier Roberts, red states that look ready to elect Democrats in November include Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky-- on top of rcrllrnt shots for Democrats in less red states, like Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, New Hampshire, Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. If you want to help the Democrats pick up not just generic Democrats but Democrats who will not be representing corporate interests over our interests, please consider making a donation to the campaigns of Tom Allen (D-ME), Andrew Rice (D-OK), Greg Fischer (D-KY), and Rick Noriega (D-TX) today at our Blue America ActBlue page.