What if they had a picnic

And no one came?
That's not exactly what went down at the Olathe Republican Party picnic, but it was close.
Oh sure, there were plenty of politicians. Sen. Jerry Moran glad-handed his way through the picnic early. Congressman Kevin Yoder gave an inspired speech that everyone in the audience had probably heard at least three times before.
As the festivities wound down, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer put in an appearance, and I think I saw Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
And of course, there were tens of candidates for state Senate and state House. But as I suspected, there was one thing largely missing at what was billed as the largest Republican event in Kansas -- basic voters.
Pretty much everyone at the event was working for some campaign -- not that there's anything wrong with that.
It just seems that with only 40-some days left between then and the primary election -- all of those campaign workers would've been better served out glad-handing voters instead of one another. But what do I know? As I've said before, I'm no insider -- just an observer.
And what I observed is the same thing I always observe at these events -- it was your basic old white person convention with a few 30 year old men thrown in for good measure. There was much hand-shaking and grinning for the camera and very little substance. Most of the conversations had to do with the hard work of campaigning.
I was pleased to see that although there were people there who had primary opponents also in attendance, I never heard disparaging words. That's something. I expected some back stabbing and vitriol.