In Kansas, a Troubling Fissure for GOP
By Nicholas Riccardi
Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2006
TOPEKA, Kan. â 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 â 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.
Snipped out of respect for copyright. Click the link and look at their ads. — Charley
Thomas Frank, in What’s the Matter With Kansas, described the political scene as having three political parties: Democrats, “mods”, and “cons”; three groups of voters of roughly equal numbers.
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The “mods” (socially moderate business conservatives) and “cons” (populist conservative backlashers) are both Republicans, and compete in Republican primaries. mods are the swing group. A Republican can win statewide office with a coalition of con & mod voters, a Democrat can win statewide office with a coaliton of Democratic & mod voters.
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The trend seems to be that the con/mod split is getting sharper, and mods are starting to become Democrats.
I loved that book. Here’s hoping more and more mods switch.
“Kansas Republican Party are losing patience with the wingnuts and are looking for a place to go.”
It’s not about Dean as a person – he’s not running for office. What we’re talking about is his strategy of investing in local and state parties everywhere in the country. In the past, the DNC has focused just on swing states. Dean ran for DNC chair on a platform that called for building up all of our state and local parties, which includes places like Kansas – which now has field organizers paid for by the DNC. So as Republicans get fed up with cultural radicals in their party who want to focus primarily on the culture war, and look around for somewhere else to go, there’s a strong Democratic party there ready to support them (and happy to welcome candidates who don’t want to focus on the culture war).
..ponder the ‘It’s My Party, Too!’ movement, based on Christie Whitman’s book. Visit http://www.itsmypartytoo.com – It’s where the ModiCons Meet and Greet!
who was drummed out of Washington, DC by her own party? Poor woman. She’s nuts to think that the power brokers in her party want her anywhere near it – as I posted in the very early days of this little blog.
…when they cease to produce the results the party wants.
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Just ask Newt Gingrich and Al Gore! Or poor Bob Shrum – think anybody is courting HIM for ’08?
any split between mods and cons should be seen as a repudiation of the dnc/lieberman/clinton triangulation of having democrats act like republicans.
let’s face it, the modern democratic party is far to the right of a JFK, but if you asked a lot of moderate swing voters today whether they would prefer a world of JFK -like policies or one dominated by the agenda of Tom Delay they would vote overwhelmingly for the former.
if the dem’s in kansas and elsewhere would draw a clear, unwavering distinction between them and the whackjobs (and get same-sex marraige and evolution off of page 1) a real urban/rural middle-class constituency could rise again.
btw, franks book is lefty pandering. a real disappointment. a much better insight (and livlier read) on about the same topic is “rednecks and bluenecks” by chris willman
I assume you meant to reply to my comment, but accidentally replied to the main post? Anyway, “franks book is lefty pandering. a real disappointment” – why? I found it a very valuable and informative book, and I read a lot of political/journalism books (though I haven’t read the one you recommend). Why did you find Frank’s book to be pandering and not valuable?
i believe that thomas frank is a very important voice today, and i wish that there were more like him. but the problem with “what’s the matter . . ” is that every conservative interviewed or referenced is presented as a borderline lunatic. (and several of them are.) and this does nothing to shed light on why democrats have failed so miserably in the so-called heartland or why republicans have been able to come to dominate. sure, you might could find people like the guy who elects himself pope or the really extremist gun types. but the dems demise has not been because of far right nuts, but because they’ve lost the reasonable mow-the-lawn-on-saturday-go-to-church-on-sunday moderates. and frank insinuating that everyone who voted republican is some kind of buffoon, just pours gasoline on the common carictatures of both the left and right.
i know a lot of midwesterners who vote republican. and even though it saddens me that they do, none of them are the kind of scary bozos that frank so highlights.
one note: his criticism of democrats weak-kneed fear of bringing up class difference is spot on.
I don’t know how ou judge “far to the right of” because there’s two different standards — historical and present. By today’s standards, no, JFK is not to the left of the Democratic Party — we’ve gone much farther on race issues than he ever did, though he was certainly the pioneer. Gay marriage – gay anything – was never an issue. For that matter, most of the issues just weren’t back then. Ask JFK how he is on the environment? Hardly, we didn’t know nearly enough about environmental protection back then. And so on. The issues are just different today than they were in the early 60s, as they ought to be.
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What I think you meant is that JFK was always on the forefront of whatever the day’s issues were – going to the moon, race relations, women’s rights and so on. And in that respect, you’re certainly correct. More Democrats need to be “future oriented,” and looking to “what’s next,” rather than only preserving what accomplishments they’ve made.
and i think that is what has generated the buzz around al gore.
if developing alternative and renewable energy sources isn’t the next new frontier, then what is?
And Dean’s absolutely right to do so. We also need candidates who have the ability to reach out and grab at states where the old left of our Party is disliked or distrusted by members of our own Party and where the DLC has forsaken.
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Mark Warner has railed against the what he calls the “16-state” strategy in which the Dems take the coasts and the upper Midwest and hope the either Florida or Ohio goes our way. He agrees with Dean on the 50-state push and has the credibility and record to go after them as a presidential candidate. Warner has a rapport with rural voters in Virginia and neighboring states. Warner would put the South and other more conservative-leaning states into play, while appealing to solid Blue states who are hungry for a winner.
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Dean’s on the money when it comes to growing the grassroots in red states, but Democrats have to be strategic in picking their candidates so that the grassroots don’t get doors slammed in their faces when they canvass.
Dean’s 50-state strategy (which is also the netroots’ 50-state strategy) isn’t about presidential candidates. It’s about building up the grassroots, the local and state parties, and the bench of new up and coming candidates. It’s about building a broad and deep Democratic infrastructure that will support a presidential run by any candidate. When Dean was running for DNC chair and got asked why he decided to do that instead of running for president again in 2008 – since he can’t do both – he would say, “if we don’t fix the party, it doesn’t matter who runs for president.”
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Clever way of linking your support for Warner with the 50-state strategy 🙂 But it’s actually the opposite: the 50-state strategy is about not focusing primarily at the top of the ticket, as Democrats have done for a couple of decades. With a good structure underneath them, any good Democratic candidate should have a good chance of winning the presidency, but it won’t happen if we think presidential campaigns are the solution.
on a well-worded post on the grassroots-building effort of Dean’s DNC initiative. Yours is also very good, so I will rate it so!
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I take the view that the party needs both. A great candidate can’t win without the roots, and the roots can’t win without a great candidate. The party has been too top heavy, but I didn’t want to repeat what had already been stated.
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Thanks, also, for the compliment. I do strongly support Warner and believe that his candidacy would help assist in growing the grass- and net-roots because of his appeal to those parts of the country that other high-profile Dem figures can’t easily reach.
Great roots = great candidates.
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The people behind focusing on a few states are the failed stategists and consultants. If they lose power, bye bye 75% of bad candidates.
I agree with your sentiment that consultants have too much sway over candidates, but I don’t agree with the implication that strong roots organizations will create or foster good candidates all the time. Unqualified and misguided candidates get elected all the time through the collective strength and “wisdom” of such organizations, especially at the local level.