Republican Pat Roberts has represented Kansas for so
long in Washington as a congressman and a senator that he
no longer feels a need to actually
own a residence in the Sunflower State. And yet the three-term
senator is trailing an independent challenger by double digits in a
state that has only elected Republicans to the Senate since the
1930s. How can that be?
Here’s a snippet of what Roberts told a crowd in Dodge City:
“There’s a palpable fear among Kansans all across the
state that the America that we love and cherish will not be the
same America for our kids and grandkids, and that’s
wrong… One of the reasons that I’m running is
to change that. There’s an easy way to do it. I’ll let you figure
it out. But at any rate, we have to change course because our
country is headed for national socialism. That’s not right. It’s
changing our culture. It’s changing what we’re all
about.”
As Politico notes, Roberts didn’t specifically reference
Germany’s Nazis (who were technically known as the National
Socialists German Workers Party), so maybe the 78-year-old
legislator was just free-associating or rambling incoherently. That
might help explain part of his campaign strategy of appearing with
91-year-old former Sen. Bob Dole. As described by the GOP-friendly
Washington Times, “Roberts’ appearance
with Mr. Dole is believed to be
his way of casting himself as a more moderate candidate to the
younger voters.”
Roberts’ record is classic big-government conservative
stuff: He voted for the George W. Bush stimulus but not the Barack
Obama version, is happy to wage war and buy military toys, is
socially conservative, etc. That’s probably not what is turning off
voters in Kansas, which he’s represented in Congress in one form or
another since 1981. Coming across as out of touch—which the
“national socialism” bit certainly suggests—and trying to cast
himself as a brave opponent of the government that he’s been part
of for the past 30-plus years is more at play.
Being out of touch isn’t just for wizened senators who
prefer not to own homes or have serious residences in the state
they claim to represent. D.C.’s Heritage Foundation recently hosted
a panel on what liberals really want. According to the writeup of
the event by MSNBC, that song goes
something like this:
“Give
up your economic freedom, give up your political freedom, and you
will be rewarded with license,” said Heritage’s David Azerrad,
describing the reigning philosophy of the left. “It’s all sex all
the time. It’s not just the sex itself—it’s the permission to
indulge.”…Given liberals’ fixation with pleasure, “I fear the next
great frontier for the left will be trying to lower the age of
consent,” said Azerrad, head of Heritage’s center for principles
and politics.
Of course, having sex with minors isvery, very important to
libruls, but we all know what the real end game is:
When an audience member pointed out that Americans had elected
Democrats in times of war, too, Azerrad replied that the priorities
of modern-day liberals had changed. “Woodrow Wilson and FDR were
not fighting for gender-neutral bathrooms,” he said.
That positive invocation of Wilson and FDR by a conservative
brings us back to Kansas actually. Back in 1976, Bob Dole was
running for vice president on the GOP ticket with Gerald Ford. One
of his talking points in a debate with Walter Mondale was something
that seems light years away from today’s bombs-away Republican
Party. A propos of nothing (literally) Dole, a wounded World War II
veteran promised viewers that a Ford-Dole administration wouldn’t
be starting all those “Democrat wars” like Wilson, FDR, and LBJ had
done.
Between candidacies such as Roberts’ and comments such as those
coming out of the Heritage Foundation’s Azzerad, it’s no wonder
that Republican chances to take over the Senate have slid from a
lock a few months ago to more of a toss-up these days. As godawful
as the Democrats and liberals generally are, they’ve always been
lucky enough to have Republicans and conservatives as their
opponents.
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