If It Walks like a Dem, Talks like a Dem, Should It Be Allowed to Caucus with the GOP?

Michael Moore once asked, dude, where's my country? And while the country he longed for is one that I don't think ever existed, I'd like to ask, dude, where's my party?

For a second time, I ask again, what's the difference between the Kansas Republican Party and the Kansas Democrats? I know it's weird, but I actually read the platform. Wanna know a few things in the Kansas GOP Platform?

Kansas Republicans SHOULD support, according to the platform:

• A culture of life
• The right to bear arms
• Growing the economy through tax policy, specifically a "fair tax which would eliminate all individual and corporate income tax in Kansas."
• Government should always seek to first constrain its expenditures;...Increasing the tax burden on citizens should be a last resort.
• We support base state funding following the student as a means of encouraging competition and promoting school choice.

Kansas Democrats, according to their platform, believe:

• An end to tax breaks for corporations that fund scholarship money that goes to private schools (They want full control of the education of all children.)
• Reinstating due process for public school teachers
• Government should provide robust funding for the arts in our communities
• Increasing the minimum wage to be a living wage
• Expand Medicaid because Obamacare is awesome
• Abortion on demand 

Mostly I think honesty is in order. If you talk like a Democrat, vote like a Democrat, you should publicly proclaim that you are a member of that party. This is called integrity, and it's something a whole lot of supposed Republicans are sincerely lacking. While I disagree with almost everything Democrats stand for, I admire the ones who are working very hard to bring their state party back from the brink of death. 

So, the actual Republicans, the ones who helped write the Republican platform, the ones who funded the soiree at the Marriott in Overland Park, the ones who fight for the values listed in the our party's platform, we have work to do. I'm not asking for a purity test. I don't expect every Republican to support every measure on the platform. There's room for various shades of gray. I don't know where the line is or how we draw it, but this is definitely something we need to work to figure out.