real picture of two fascistsThis week AP reporter John Hanna reported how McConnell is moving to deny Kansas Republicans the opportunity to pick their own Senate nominee this year, basically using the same anti-democracy tactics that Schumer uses with the DSCC and that Cheri Bustos uses in the House.I'm no fan of Kansas racist and neo-Nazi Kris Kobach but he's the best representative of what Kansas Republicans are all about regardless of what McConnell's calculus for staying in power is all about. There are plenty of decent people in Kansas. In fact, I never met a Kansan I didn't like and respect. But the dominant wing of the Kansas Republican Party is a different species altogether. And McConnell knows it-- and is willing to take them on. Once Mike Pompeo-- a far right, Koch-owned theocrat and Trump loyalist who imagines himself as a future president-- announced last week he isn't going to run for the empty U.S. Senate seat, McConnell almost had a heart attack.Schumer has already recruited a mainstream conservative Republican, state Senator Barbara Bollier, a recent convert to the Democratic Party, although not to anything it stands for. But there are at least a dozen Republicans seeking the seat, including, of course, Kobach, whose racism, xenophobia and fascist tendencies are very popular among Republicans but less so among normal Kansans. In 2018 Kobach won the Republican gubernatorial primary against GOP incumbent Jeff Colyer by just 343 votes-- 128,549 (40.62%) to 128,204 (40.51%). With independents and some mainstream Republicans backing her, Democrat Laura Kelly beat him in the general election 506,727 (48.0%) to 453,645 (43.0%).Nor is that the first time an election played out that way for Kobach. In 2004, he won the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd district (by just 0.3%) and then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat by more than 11 points. McConnell is petrified that that's what will happen again, endangering his own job as majority leader. So he may get behind a not very well known congressman, Roger Marshall, as a replacement candidate for Pompeo.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee questioned Kobach’s ability to win a general election when he announced his candidacy last summer.And Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief political strategist, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, said, “We continue to think Kobach is a loser.”Some Republicans want to winnow the field by urging candidates at the back of the field to drop out. Kelly Arnold, another former state GOP chairman, said if candidates can’t conduct effective fundraising, “it’s time for them to get out.”Kobach said Tuesday that his independence bothers the Republican establishment-- including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell-- and led it to woo Pompeo. His supporters argue that with Trump on the ballot in November, fears of losing the Kansas seat are misplaced.“We’re seeing a race where conservatives are lining up behind me,” Kobach said.Kobach also believes his background is an asset with tensions high in the Middle East. At the Justice Department, he helped develop a system that forced more than 80,000 foreign residents to register with the U.S. government so that it could know why they were there for security reasons. Widely derided by civil rights groups, it was abandoned in 2011 by President Barack Obama’s administration.Marshall spokesman Eric Pahls said the congressman’s seven years in the Army Reserve are more crucial.“Kansans want to know there’s someone with military experience helping to make these decisions,” he said.But Bob Beatty, a Washburn University of Topeka political scientist, said Kobach has built a reputation among Republicans as “someone who doesn’t back down.”“A foreign policy crisis is going to bring out more conservative voters,” Beatty said.The leading Democratic candidate is state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist who made national headlines by switching from the GOP at the end of 2018. She has endorsements from Kelly and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former two-term Democratic governor, and she already is pursuing moderate voters.Bollier’s campaign announced Tuesday that she’s raised more than $1 million over the past three months-- a sizable amount in a low-cost media state like Kansas.But Marshall began his race with a sizeable balance from his House campaign and entered the final three months of 2019 with nearly $1.9 million in cash. That was twice as much as the combined total of his main GOP rivals, Kobach, Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle and Dave Lindstrom, a Kansas City-area businessman and ex-Kansas City Chiefs professional football player.The U.S. Chamber helped Marshall win his congressional seat in 2016 by defeating tea party firebrand Rep. Tim Huelskamp. Reed said they’re considering helping him in the Senate race and the “onus is on him” to show he can win the nomination.Marshall launched his first television ad before Christmas, describing himself as a foe to “Trump haters and their phony impeachment.”Yet Marshall hasn’t yet convinced some Republicans. Shallenburger sees his pro-Trump statements as “pandering” and says his ouster of Huelskamp has him perceived as a moderate, despite a conservative voting record.Kobach is better known and, to some conservatives, just more exciting. University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller said Kobach excels “at the theater” of politics, while Marshall seems “vanilla.”“If central casting called for a generic Republican congressman, that could be Roger Marshall, right?” Miller said. “Someone to just, like, be in the background of the movie shot.”
photo shopBloomberg News reporters Laura Litvan and Jennifer Jacobs made it clear that McConnell will make the final decision who the nominee is, not anyone in Kansas. He seems to be leaning towards Marshall. And why not? Isn't that why Congress tends to be so generic and why the establishment is so utterly repulsive? Bollier, for example, has not one single policy on her website, and says she's running to be "a voice of reason in Washington." She makes it clear she isn't partisan and when she has to spit out in her ad that she's a Democrat, she says she's a "pragmatic Democrat." She could have said, 'don't worry about me; I'm a Chuck Schumer Democrat, just like Kyrsten Sinema and I'll never vote like a progressive. Never!'
