In Kansas, a Troubling Fissure for GOP

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-kansas13jun13,0,5844578.story?coll=la-home-nation

Mark Parkinson got his start in Republican politics at age 19, as a precinct committeeman. He served six years as a Republican state legislator, eventually becoming state Republican chairman.

But two weeks ago, Parkinson announced he was running for lieutenant governor — as a Democrat. He said he no longer felt welcome in the increasingly conservative Kansas Republican Party.

Parkinson became the third Republican politician in the last nine months to startle this red state by switching to the minority party. The other two are targeting GOP incumbents in the attorney general's office and in the state House of Representatives.

Political observers say the fracture within the Kansas GOP may foreshadow the future for the national party. The division between moderates and social conservatives is expected to define the contest for the party's 2008 presidential nomination.

But if the Dems can use this to wrest control of Congress, so be it.

He's obviously a thoughtful individual who understands that being a Republican once meant standing for something. Now, it means standing ON something... aircraft carriers, rubble, flooded cities... so long as it makes you look good.

wall. I am troubled by this exodus of people that are very comfortable with most of the traditional re:puke: "values" now calling themselves Democratic.

The last thing any country needs is two right-wing parties and nobody representing the center and left.

prompt other Republicans to tell the nutcase fundies to go to hell.

We'll take their votes, too. That'd be even better.

and it never does. It's a high wire act balancing act that the extreme right is trying to walk for sure, but it seems that most of the flock stays in place.

moderates, have always been uneasy with the Christian Taliban take over of "their" party. However, they only have themselves to blame.

While they were out on the golf course, the hatemongers were going to caucus meetings, running for precinct captains, and establishing fundraising lists. One day the moderates woke up, and discovered the crazy aunt in the attic had taken over the entire house and locked the moderates out in the garage.

Now, the crazy aunt is slowly destroying the party from within. Can the moderates resurrect the party? Is it worth resurrecting?

Apparently to many republican moderates, they have decided that no, the republican party cannot be saved, or is not worth saving, and they are choosing a party more inline with their views.

The Christian Taliban pretty much destroyed the republican party in Washington State, as they have in Cal-eeee-fornia, and their destructive powers will eventually sweep across the land. What starts on the West Coast almost always ends up in middle America, and Kansas is pretty much dead-center America. :popcorn:

From Eisenhower to Alf Landon to his daughter Nancy Kassebaum, most Kansas GOP'ers are fairly moderate and common sense. The history of their party doesn't fit well with the radical right wing.

reading.

I don't know if it's true, but someone on here can probably confirm it for me. Apparently, back when Kansas was originally granted statehood, there was a state-wide vote to determine if it would enter the Union as a slave or a free state. In the days leading up to the vote, many members of pro-slavery groups moved in from Missouri, hoping to tip the balance. And the abolitionists still won.

Google "Bleeding Kansas"

The town of Lawrence, Kansas was founded by folks from New England who moved there for the sole reason of adding numbers to the pro-abolition vote. It remains an oasis of liberalism in the Midwest.

"I decided I'd rather spend time building great universities than wondering if Charles Darwin was right."

Dick Cheney was partially right when he said the insurgency was in its last throes. He was wrong about it being in Iraq. It's actually the religious conservatives here that are in their last throes, I believe.

you think they're done, gone, out, kaput, they have a bad habit of popping back up and becoming a pain in the ass all over again. They truly believe, for some reason beyond my comprehension, that you cannot have honest, patriotic, and fair (although fair is only a minor consideration) government if religion is not its guiding principal. And it has always been the white, Protestant (or sometimes Baptist), God wants everybody but people like them to understand that they are lesser beings and therefore don't deserve the same rights, liberties, and privileges as they do, kind of religion.

Just that the Party took a sharp right turn & I fell out. Some nice Democrats came along & gave me a ride & I've been with them ever since.
Of course, my wife says that if I'm a Republican then she's Angelina Jolie. Which would make me Brad Pitt & therefore NOT a Republican (she explained it all to me.)
Seriously, the Kansas GOP and the Democratic Party had a decent working relationship where we mostly agreed on what the State needed & only had minor disagreements about how to fund it. Then Nixon sold the Party to the Right Wing Nutjobs in '72 & all Hell broke loose - the Reaganite takeover started in 1976 and was complete by 1996. We watched a GOP so Hellbent on idealogical purity they would rather see a Democrat as governor than unite behind a reasonably competent & popular moderate Republican. Several popular Republican officeholders have left politics all together (mostly women - a trend there in the GOP?)
It will be interesting to watch. And, contrary to popular belief, when it comes to the GOP (unlike music, fashion, etc) Kansas LEADS the trends, not the Left Coast.
-former Jayhawker living in Southwest Georgia.

from the article quoting ousted former republican Ms. Neighbor...

"
Now Neighbor's running for her old seat — as a Democrat.

"It was, 'If you don't like this — goodbye,' " she said of her struggles to stay in the Republican Party. As a Democrat, Neighbor added, "you can still have your ideas and you're accepted."

what does this say about the state of the party that a died-in-the-wool Republican operative finds the Democratic party a place for his anti-progressive so-called moderate stances on anything.

If this kind of things happens on a massive scale, the Republican party will be left as a small minority party of incredibly far-right nut cases who no longer have enough power to do damage.

Any candidate like this, that is able to re-assess their values instead of continually molding their world into a black-and-white arena, I welcome with open arms to the democratic party.

with that single party being center-right. Not my idea of a healthy political system.

Migration between political parties isn't the key, migration across ideologies is. The two aren't the same.

A real left party would be good. If it was based on being good stewards of the environment, taking care of the family with green jobs and responsible governing they just might have something.

Please see my post on the Kansas board for more info.

YES, we'll need to watch for DINOs, but overall this is a positive development. Statewide, eight Republicans have switched parties for the upcoming elections. Further, Kansas Democrats are resurgent in other ways: 58 Republican-held seats have challengers, up from 39 in 2004, which of course was a presidential election year. Another post says that in largely suburban Johnson County, a record of 20 Democratic candidates are running (in 22 districts) for the state House. JoCo is heavily Republican, but largely moderate, and if enough moderates change allegiances, Democrats can get elected.

I find this all encouraging.

I share everyone else's fear of DINOs, but the defections are still encouraging. It's good to finally see some signs of sanity again.

Republicans will do anything to win. These ship jumpers are just a bunch of carpetbaggers until proven otherwise.

2 or 3 years in the Party, attend Party functions, and pass a Candidate Test, to make reasonably sure, the new Dem Candidate reflects the Dem Philosophy...if we just let anyone become a Dem and run...well, ya know what I mean.