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1. Pat Roberts was 78 years old and will be 84 or 85 when his term expires. <<
When I first started lurking on FR, Storm Thurmond was 96 years old and would be 100 years old when his term expired in 2003. His voting record was similar to Roberts -- not perfect (he voted the wrong way on a handful of important bills) but definitely one of the more reliably conservative senators. Nobody screamed "RINO!!" at Strom, called him Democrat-lite, insisted that "its time for the old geezer to go or be pushed", or recruited some unknown clueless amateur from Spartenberg to oppose him. Back then, we fought to remove actual RINOs like Arlen Specter, instead of eating our own and wasting lots of time and money to purge people who agree with us.
>> 2. Pat Roberts is not set foot in Kansas except to campaign since Dorothy went skipping down the yellow brick road. <<
Neither had Liz Cheney in Wyoming when she decided to run for Senator there a few months ago, but since she was the self-proclaimed "Tea Party" candidate, 90% of the Milton Wolf cheerleaders were TOTALLY supportive of her running in a state she hadn't lived in since she was 12. Back in January, The Tea Party Express, RedState.com, Mark Levin, etc., had no problem whatsoever with a decades-long resident of Virginia running for Senator elsewhere. Sorry guys, the "treasonous when Roberts does it but awesome when Liz Cheney does it" message didn't help your cause. Maybe next time you shouldn't change your principles from candidate to candidate.
>> 3. Milton Wolf was an able candidate, with impeccable conservative credentials <<
Stop right there. You are describing someone who doesn't exist. What were his "impeccable conservative credentials". Name one "conservative" thing he had ever done or said in public prior to running for Senate. Not a single Milton Wolf cheerleader has been able to answer this question (and Fieldmarshaldj has poised it every thread), because Milton Wolf's "conservative credentials" didn't exist and his "fearless conservative fighter" persona was invented for a Senate race. Anyone can promise anything to get elected, that doesn't give them "impeccable credentials" to demonstrate it. Wolf's appeal was much like his "cousin" Obama in 2008: a "fresh and new" politician with no political track record who gives slick speeches promising to fundamentally change Washington DC if we elect him.
>> 4. The setback in Kansas is not isolated but part of a pattern across the country in which we see establishment Republicans prevailing over Tea Party reformers. <<
Wolf is part a pattern of embarrassing Tea Party "reformers" who turn out to be terrible candidates. That puts him in the same category as jokes like Sharon Angle and Ken Buck. When the Tea Party runs CREDIBLE candidates, they've won numerous times. Read up on Ben Sasse, Jodi Ernst, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, David Brat, etc., etc. I guarantee you none of them ran on being distantly related to Obama. They could stand on their own two feet.
>> 5. The loss was not close, seven or eight points. <<
Yes, again, because Milton Wolf sucked and had nothing to offer voters but endlessly talk about how he's distantly related to Obama and that electing him would somehow "embarrass Obama". You can't win with nobody, sorry. If Roberts had been an ACTUAL RINO and you had a PROVEN conservative running against him, it would be an entirely different scenario. Chris McDaniels didn't run on an Obamaesque message of "hope and change" against someone who was already solidly conservative, or base his candidacy around being distantly related to Pelosi.
1.
Pat Roberts was 78 years old and will be 84 or 85 when his term expires. Pat Roberts is too old and too detached to lead a charge to clean up Washington. The Republic is not in the condition today to continue business as usual. We cannot afford placeholders, even conservative placeholders.
2. Pat Roberts is not set foot in Kansas except to campaign since Dorothy went skipping down the yellow brick road
Those of us who supported Liz Cheney against a moderately conservative candidate in Wyoming did so for the same reasons I expressed in the preceding paragraph, we are at war and we need people who will wage war.
3. Milton Wolf was an able candidate, with impeccable conservative credentials
Wolf certainly was an able candidate, he was credible on television etc. He was possessed of "impeccable" conservative credentials in the proper sense of the word in that there was no flaw against him as a conservative.
4. The setback in Kansas is not isolated but part of a pattern across the country in which we see establishment Republicans prevailing over Tea Party reformers.
It is the pattern which is concerning. Each race can be rationalized as a local matter but cumulatively the pattern is very concerning. Are we to suppose that all the candidates against Lindsey Graham, Lamar Alexander, Mitch McConnell, and Thad Cochran were somehow deficient? Even in Mississippi we could not prevail to victory over the establishment even though we won the vote among the conservative electorate. We've seen some very good candidates lose and we've seen some good candidates lose with one slip of the tongue. Against these imagined deficiencies of all of these candidates we must weigh the state of the union and ask ourselves, if we cannot win under these circumstances when can we win?
5. The loss was not close, seven or eight points.
Milton Wolf did not "suck," we simply disagree. If in this context you had pointed out that the Republican establishment Senate campaign committee had funded Roberts, had Senate Republicans put foot soldiers on the ground which made a difference, had they run a ground game and Robert's behalf, all as reported today in Politico, we would be in agreement on shared facts. But those facts only go to show how daunting it is for reformers to prevail over incumbents backed by the establishment. All of this, by the way, is alluded to in my original vanity.
Seven points is not close by anybody's count.
