Second Verse, Same as the First

You didn’t imagine the sound of a thundering herd of RINOs shuffling across the Kansas plains in their house slippers. The Traditional Republicans for Common Sense, Women for Kansas, Moderate Kansas, and others are rallying again.

In case you missed it, there’s a new group --second verse, same as the first-- hoping to wrench power from the hands of conservatives. Calling itself the Save Kansas Coalition, this group is a collection of has-been groups who’ve tried this before. Actually, they’ve tried it every year since 2010, when the majority of so-called mods were swept out of office in a landslide.  I wish they’d just be honest and call themselves Democrats. (And, you know what? The Democrats are starting to wish they’d do that too.)

If these groups weren’t so obnoxious and sanctimonious, I would want to bring them a ham and offer my condolences. After six  years, they still don’t get it. Kansas is conservative, and no amount of their whining is going to change that.

These groups threw their best at the Sunflower State in 2014 and walked away empty handed. Paul Davis--sanctimony is thy name--was walloped. So-called independent Greg Orman was blasted back to wherever. (Where DID that guy go?)

So here we go again. These exact same people are rebranding AGAIN. It would be an inspirational story--group of downtroddens get back on the horse again--if these groups weren’t so ridiculous. Also, inspirational stories require a happy ending. Yeah, I don’t see that happening. But the film version could definitely be a comedy. I know I can’t look at pictures of the Women for Kansas without laughing. Every event, every press release is a hippy drum circle of silly.

Tagline: If you’re not laughing at those photos of actual Women for Kansas, womenning for Kansas, you’re doing it wrong.

And then there’s this group: Traditional Republicans for Common Sense. This is an organization comprised of 74 former office holders. For the most part, these aren’t office holders who gracefully retired. They were tossed out of office by voters. I’m just going to repeat what I wrote in 2012 about these has-beens:

Whenever a liberal starts talking about "common sense" they mean anything but...To them, "common sense" is the exact opposite of critical thinking.  

Anyway, they're in the news again, complaining that the Republican Party was "hijacked." 

And by 'hijacked,' they mean that many of their members were thrown out of office on their asses, not by violent overthrow but by Kansas voters. I guess the official position of the TRCS is, How Dare They? 

Lucky for them, I can explain how dare we, the voters, throw you out on your collective rears: The third world called. They want their political philosophy back. 

Among the rank and file of the TRCS are former Republican Senators Steve Morris, Terrie Huntington, Jean Schodorf, and Tim Owens. They lost fair and square in primary elections, but they somehow think they're entitled to retain their power. 

I hate to break it to them, but that's not how it works here in the U.S.A. If you peddle tired ideas, the voters may get tired of you. That's what happened. It wasn't a hijacking. Circa summer 2012, they became irrelevant -- just like the policies they were pimping.

You'll note that the group, comprised mainly of whiny losers, sounds suspiciously like a herd of rhinoceroses thundering across the Kansas plains. It's a relatively small herd, but they make a lot of noise.

And then there are the recent groups, created by useful tools in teacher’s unions and filled with former school librarians, current public school counselors and kneecap-breaking-Teamsters. (Seriously, if people knew the kind of things some of these current public school staffers were saying on Twitter, they’d be remiss about sending their children into their lairs on a daily basis.) These groups include the scrapbooking cat ladies calling themselves GameOn for Kansas Schools and Stand Up Blue Valley.

The Stand Up Blue Valley folks are diabolical. In a baffling display, this group rallied to have money taken from their own school district in order to offer western Kansas families tax breaks.

And then there’s Republicans for Kansas Values, a group who proudly supported Paul Davis for Governor. Serious question: If you don’t support any Republican policies and you don’t support any Republican candidates, should you call yourselves ‘Republicans?’ Asking for a friend.

These groups are the same old people saying the same old things they’ve been saying since they lost power in 2010. In many cases, the memberships of every group overlaps so much it’s odd that they’ve created separate organizations.

This is bitterness and sour grapes and a desperate attempt to regain the power they lost. Kansans rejected them, and rejection stings. It was not a clean break-up, and now these groups are like a stalker ex-boyfriend who refuses to move on.