Upheaval in Kansas Senate as election official rules Dem can´t withdraw

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) has denied Democrat Chad Taylor’s request to be removed from the Kansas Senate ballot. His Thursday decision means Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) will face three candidates on the ballot this fall — Taylor, independent Greg Orman and libertarian Randall Batson — boosting the vulnerable senator’s reelection prospects. Now, Taylor could siphon off enough anti-Roberts votes from Orman, who’s been surging in the race and is now seen by Democrats as their best shot to take Roberts down, to deliver the senator an opening for a win. Kobach told reporters that, after evaluating state

The Torrecelli/Lautenburg analogy is a false one, IMO. In that case, the Dems wanted to get a loser off the ballot and replace him with a corpse who had name recognition. The argument hinged on the voters right to a choice on the Democrat line of the ballot.

In this case, the Dems want to remove the name of their radioactive candidate and have no intention of replacing him as required by Kansas law should a withdrawal be allowed. They don’t want the voters to have a choice on the Democrat line, hoping that they will vote for the phony Independent, Orman.

What happens if the Democrats refuse to name a candidate, or stalls? Ballots need to be printed so that absentee ballots can be mailed to the military overseas. The Kansas Secretary of State is responsible for ensuring that that occurs. Don’t the Democrats of Kansas who selected Taylor in their primary have a right to vote for him in the General Election? What is the judge going to say about that?

The particular language in the statute has never been challenged in court. I cannot imagine a scenario where the court could make a timely ruling that will inevitably be appealed to the Kansas Supreme Court. The Secretary of State had to rule as he did yesterday, according to law. Now he has to act according to law and print the ballots with Taylor’s name on them.

One more point, Kansas is not New Jersey.

All my life I dreamed that some day Republicans would be in charge of everything. My parents always told me that would result in a real change in this country. My father was born when Coolidge was president, so it’s been a while.

So, when we finally had a Republican president and Republcans in the majority in both houses of Congress, I was overjoyed. What happened? They spent money like Democrats. They stopped doing what worked in Afghanistan and sent our troops on nation-building invasions that anyone with any sense of military history could have seen would fail. They grabbed all the pork they could get for their districts and states and blathered about fairness and compassionate conservatism and generally pandered to liberals and morons.

Voters, who were told they would get prosperity, less government, and swift revenge over Islamic nuts at very little cost to us, turned against the Republicans and this brought us a true Commie president, BO.

Some of the worst judges were appointed by Republicans. Some of the biggest expansions of government spending and federal overreach were either instigated or supported by Republicans. We still don’t have a Republican with the courage of a Geert Wilder to speak the truth about Islam and what really needs to be done. We don’t hear much from supposedly Christian Republicans about the promotion of homosexual perversion or of the propaganda going on in the government schools. How many Republican politicians are promoting school choice in any meaningful way? Maybe a few, but in muted tones for certain audiences only. I would faint if any of them actually suggested the real solution, which is to get government out of education at all levels.

Oh, I will vote Republican this fall, but color me skeptical that it will matter. I felt the Republican party had sold its soul to the devil when Bush the elder didn’t lambast that whiny weasel who asked about government being his daddy. That is when the canary in the coal mine did a nose dive off the perch.

The real problem is not the politicians, of course, it is the voters. If Americans wanted smaller government and less spending, we would have it. I’m afraid it will take a huge economic crisis to make an impact, and it’s not going to be pretty. We may even see a civil war and the US break apart.

I’m not a glass half-full person or a glass half-empty person. I’m a “the glass is cracked and leaking all over the place” person. ;-)

Suggested reading: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism by John Derbyshire

Cheers!

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