Notes from My Purple State: Kansas GOP Still Fighting

by Jesse Zerger Nathan, 2007-01-25

Nationwide, the GOP took a thrashing in November. Republicans lost 350 seats in state legislative races, not to mention control of the U.S. House and Senate. This is old news, I know. But usually, after a political party gets whipped, it starts to whip itself into shape. In other words, a customary period of soul-searching traditionally follows defeat. But in Kansas, stubborn right-wing Republicans and fed-up Republican moderates aren’t interested in mending fences, uniting the GOP, and moving on to future victories. Surprising as this self-sabotage is, instead, both blocs of the Kansas GOP are digging their heels in for more confrontations—with each other.

After conservatives like Phil Kline, Jim Ryun, and a cadre of right-wing Board of Education members were shown the door in November, it’s hard to say what the Kansas GOP lost first, the 2006 elections or party credibility in the eyes of Sunflower State voters. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Either way, the Kansas Republican party continues to drain its own credibility by splitting into ever-more entrenched factions and engaging in fits of childish infighting. And, either way, Kansas, post-November 2006, is a whole lot less red and whole lot more blue. So much so, in fact, that I’ve renamed my column to reflect this happy new murkiness here on the plains: “Notes From My Purple State.”

Nothing highlights the Kansas GOP’s current, splintered nature more than Phill Kline’s recent re-injection into Kansas politics. Kline, of course, lost badly to former Republican Paul Morrison—a man who changed parties for the sole reason that he could not stand Kline’s ideologically-charged law enforcement practices. Morrison left his post as Johnson County DA (one of the five richest counties in the United States, by the way) to run against Kline. He won by twenty percentage points. That should have been the end of Kline, right?

Wrong. This is Kansas, folks, and you’re about to find out what’s the matter with it.

In late December, as 2006 was drawing in its last ragged gasps, the far right wing of the Johnson County Republican party appointed Phill Kline as Paul Morrison’s replacement. In other words, these fanatical right-wing members of the Kansas GOP made sure that Kline and Morrison just swapped jobs. The vote was deeply split: 316 to 291—and all Kline’s GOP opponents, after finding out Kline had been chosen as DA in a county where he’d been defeated 65 to 35 percent in the state AG race, left the room.

“The moment Phill Kline got the nomination, half the room got up and walked out,” Scott Schwab, Johnson County GOP chairman, told the Washington Post on December 30. “It wasn’t so much yelling or cussing. They threw up their arms and said, ‘What do we do now?’” Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, for her part, refused to sign Kline’s nomination papers, a ceremonial option that has no legal weight, lamenting that a “narrow group of partisan political operatives” chose him.

The Kline debacle reveals just how deep the split in the Kansas Republican party runs. Social Conservatives—represented by the likes of Phill Kline and Sam Brownback—are making no concessions, even though voters sent them a loud signal in November.

But neither are moderates backing down. “I think the divide between the moderates and conservatives is deepening rather than closing,” Kansas State University political science professor Joseph Aistrup told the Post. “This type of politics is continuing into our future, at least another four years.”

And with Brownback—a man the Lawrence Journal-World called the “engineer” of a conservative takeover of the Kansas GOP in recent years—maybe making a grab at the Presidency, these divisions aren’t likely to cool down anytime soon. David Kensinger, a former Brownback chief of staff who the Journal-World says has “waged war on moderate Republicans who supported tax increases for schools” in the last five years, claims that without Brownback, the GOP would be “flat on its back.”

That’s, um, his opinion.

Another viewpoint, it seems, is that the GOP is flat on its back precisely because of fanatical right-wingers like Brownback who’ve taken the party far to the right of its moderate roots, roots that gave rise to politicians like Nancy Kassebaum, James Pearson, and even Bob Dole. (Yes, even Bob Dole sounds liberal these days).

Like many Kansans, Johnson County voter Robert Meneilly, a Presbyterian pastor and formerly staunch GOPer said, “It just looks like a slap in the face to the voters of Johnson County to have [Kline] put in there.” Because of folks like Kline and Brownback, Meneilly plans to switch parties. “I’ve stayed in the party because my wife thinks you can do more inside the party than out,” he said. “That hasn’t been the fact so far.”
For Democrats, this malaise in the GOP is an obvious opportunity. The grand scheme engineered by Karl Rove has begun, finally, to show cracks. As Rove and Company have focused on charging up an increasingly radical right-wing base over the last decade, they’ve finally miscalculated the level of frustration moderate Americans have toward extremist policies of any sort.

This means the Democratic Party has an opportunity to bring voters like Meneilly into its fold—which is exactly what the savvy Kathleen Sebelius did before last November’s election: she won over a whole batch of converts, including high-profile folks like Paul Morrison and her running mate, Mark Parkinson.

Even the GOP admits that the infighting hurts its chances down the road. Kline’s appointment in Johnson County, for instance, makes gaining on Democrats in the next few years more difficult. “My job is to elect Republicans, and he made it very difficult,” GOP chairman Schwab said.

Either way, you can bet Phill Kline is happier than ever: his new post includes a raise. Johnson County’s new district attorney will now be making $50,000 more a year than he ever did as State AG.


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