Misjudging Kansas

Mark Parkinson, the Republican-turn-Democrat who wrote the 2004 liberal query “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” was the subject of a commentary by DeWayne Wickham in yesterday’s USA Today. Not so unusually for USA Today, the piece is a bit of a love fest implying that long-term Republicans, mostly the treasured “moderates” and mavericks the antiques like so much, are deserting the Republicans in drove and predicts they will possibly start swinging traditionally red states to the blue category.

That makes sense, because, you know, there’s nothing a Republican wants to do more than vote for a Democrat. I wonder sometimes how columnists with USA Today get their jobs, if they just come out of Cracker Jack boxes or if you turn in so many cereal box tops you get a columnist job. Hard to say. What is more likely, and what people like Wickham fail to grasp typically, is that usually the votes are more often on conservative and liberal lines anymore at the higher levels.

My first concern is his use of the 2002 gubernatorial run of Kathleen Sebelius, a “moderate” Democrat, whatever moderates are these days (for either party). Using gubernatorial elections as predictors for national trends or even state trends has never been that good of an indicator of the people’s voting habits. Indiana had Democrat governors from 1988 to 2004 and this state never went to a Democrat in any Presidential election. It’s not unique in that respect either. Local politics and national politics are two very different animals. Take Florida for instance. In the panhandle, in the old swamp counties, locals would rather shoot their dog than vote for a local Republican in many cases. They won’t hesitate to vote for a Republican governor or President, though. It’s politics of scale and Mr. Wickham might want to consider learning a bit about American politics before writing such a flawed editorial again.

Then there’s the matter of what Wickham makes of Parkinson’s defection to the Democrats. He notes that for Parkinson, the abandonment of economic development, education and limiting of government in people’s lives has been sacrificed for cultural warfare. I would argue that Parkinson is only partially correct.

While the Republicans may not be the small government types they used to claim they were, Democrats are by no means small government types and NEVER claimed to be. As for education, the Republicans and other parties like Libertarians have pushed for more reform versus more money (and lately that’s been more Libertarians). Democrats want to continue the money chute for failed programs like HEAD START and increased “social programs” and thus bureaucracy. So Parkinson’s argument in that area is disingenuous at worst and naïve at best. The Republicans also have strayed in limited impact on individual liberty, but the Democrats have made it quite clear they’ll seek a renewal and raising of taxes across the board, which one might argue is an even greater intrusion than the NSA wire-tapping terror suspects. It must've slipped his mind that CARNIVORE and ECHELON were implemented most heavily under the Democrat’s watch.

Then of course he mentions a slew of Republicans from other states who've defected to the Democrat side, most I would imagine RINO's to begin with. To assume that it's some big coup that a liberal would choose the more liberal party is again a bit short-sighted. No mention is present, of course, of the vast array of conservative Democrats over the past decade that have switched over to the Republican Party. This sort of thing happens. Some politicos on both sides of the fence do it to make sure they get a few more votes in the next election as well. That's yet another old game in politics.

What possibly disturbs me most about such speculative pieces as this is they ignore the historical fact that this happens just about every election and has for a lot longer than any of us have been around. When it benefits the agenda of the writer, and USA Today is typically a fairly strong liberal organ, then it's treated as some sort of new development rather than an ancient trend. History gives way to expediency of purpose, and the purpose today is to use the typical red state like Kansas as an example of how the Republicans are dieing and implying that the Democrats, the "party of the people" (whoo...hang on, had to stop the gut wrenching laughter before I could proceed) will be the Party ascendant. If they do, it will only be by simple osmotic inertia. Where one Party falls back, the other oozes in to fill the void like the primordial sludge the Parties are.

So what's wrong with Kansas? That they think old school liberalism, that very set of policies which led us into high crime, double digit inflation, a massive deficit (I dare anyone to say conservative or libertarian policies cause deficits), the burden of leviathan social welfare programs and a national economic malaise, will somehow be accepted and work again now that the antique media and RINO converts like Parkinson have spent the last few years demonizing any policy to the right of Mao. We'll see how much the voters have swallowed come November, though.