Next time your conservative friends say the pukes aren't that conservative

[rpannier]

here's something you can pass on to them.

If there's one family name that stands out as being the protypical Republican family it's the Kassebaums of Kansas. Nancy Kassebaums father ran for President against Roosevelt and lost. He was called by many people Mr. Republican for many years. Nancy Kassebaum, his daughter, was an extremely popular US Senator from Kansas. Her son Bill was ousted from his statehouse seat -- apparantly he was not conservative enough for the Kansas Republican Party, because he backed an education spending bill.

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

[AverageJoe]

1. Agree with them

The repigs are not conservative in the least. They are radical reactionaries. The closest thing the United States has to a conservative party is the Democratic Party.

True conservatism is not, by its nature, a bad thing. It's basically a philosophy of caution.

The real tragedy is that there is no true, viable progressive party in the United States.

[SheilaT]

2. As a Kansas Democrat who's

active in politics here, thanks for posting that link.

What it doesn't say is how Paul Morrison, Cindy Neighbor, and all the other former Republicans now Democrats are all quite amazed and pleased at how much they've been welcomed into the Democratic party.

Phill Kline, our current AG, is someone who'd let his license to practice law lapse before he ran, and I think he may have not bothered to vote in several elections, but then I may be confusing him with other Kansas conservative Republicans who've done that very thing. Kline just barely won four years ago against a complete unknown who barely campaigned. Paul Morrison is a very popular Johnson County District Attorney who's won election to that post some ten or more times.

Bill Kassebaum was the victim of an ugly right-wing smear campaign, precisely because he did vote for better school funding. It doesn't look as if he's running again, and it looks as if the woman who defeated him two years ago is likewise not running. At least this time there's a Democrat in that race.

One of the biggest problems we have in Kansas is that too many who consider themselves Democrats at heart insist on registering Republican so they can vote in the primary, which is likely to have several races contested on the Republican side. As a consequence Democratic registrations are artificially low -- so low that it can be very difficult to get Dems to bother to run for office, especially for the State House and Senate. This year we're only electing the House and there's a very record number of Democrats, at least here in Johnson County, running for that office.