Don’t let big money steal our state
The future of Kansas is being sold off, one 30-second commercial and one slick mass mailing at a time, to big-money interests with hidden agendas.
As we approach Tuesday’s election, commercials and flyers are bombarding us every few minutes. Yet rarely do they talk about the actual serious issues the state faces.
Rather, hired-run political strategists creating them seem to have such disdain for the intelligence of state voters that all they give us are messages so demagogic that Vladimir Putin would be embarrassed to try them.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic would seem to be a more worthwhile pursuit than trying to determine, based on political advertising, who is best to steer our ship of state for the next four years.
It’s been some time since newspaper endorsements were an important part of political races, but we’ve heard so many people express so much confusion over next week’s election that we at least want to weigh in.
If you like former Gov. Sam Brownback, whose imbecilic economic policies nearly bankrupt the state, you’ll love cronies Dan Colyer and Kris Kobach.
If you think the Ku Klux Klan is a bunch of pinko flower children, Kobach is your man. He’s done nothing in the campaign but spout misleading slogans designed to rouse redneck rabble to his cause. Colyer is a little more civilized, but his economics are just as voodoo as Brownback’s failed ideas.
If you want Kansas to be a national laughingstock, vote Kobach. If you’re not quite that far gone but still want the state to be as stagnant as a drought-diminished farm pond, choose Colyer.
What neither of them wants you to know is that there are other candidates, who aren’t being bankrolled by huge special interests intent on taking ownership of the state after they slide their man into the governor’s mansion.
Two worth pondering are insurance commissioner Ken Selzer, who isn’t that far off on the issues from Kobach and Coyler, and former Senate president Jim Barnett.
Barnett, who used to represent this area in the state senate, is the only candidate who hasn’t been pushing every hot-button issue for all it’s worth.
He’s an old-school Republican, cut of the same cloth as Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker — a person who actually thinks before spouting slogans and the only Republican with a platform that isn’t so reactionary it will wither in the light of a fall campaign, essentially ceding the race to a Democrat.
Big-money interests don’t like him. Rednecks aren’t impressed. He doesn’t spend his days shouting at the wind about guns and flags and abortion and illegal immigrants.
When you go to the polls, the choice should be clear: Sell Kansas — or, at least, the soul of the Republican Party — to big-money reactionaries, or do a little thinking about the real challenges Kansas faces.
— Eric Meyer