Discussion: How Pat Roberts Dug Himself Out Of The Grave In The Kansas Senate Race

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Discussion for article #229129

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Kansas gets what Kansas wants and deserves. If they put an ape like Roberts back in office, whatever pile of crap the citizens of Kansas have to eat afterwards is their just dessert.

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My guess is that polling in Kansas is pretty solid so this looks bad. From what I’ve seen at TPM there only a few urban areas in Kansas that Orman can hammer in the last week or so and of course we can hope the Brownback ‘miracle’ does it’s magic and shaves off a few points for Mr. Roberts.

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Same goes with Brownback. I am secretly hoping he wins and thus claim a mandate to double down on the Koch New Deal.

It is what Kansans deserve.

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Why did anyone think Roberts was going to lose? As soon as he became the alternative to Roberts, he became essentially the Democrat. It wasn’t that hard to figure out how to beat him. Just claim he will caucus with Democrats and support Obama’s agenda, after all this is Kansas.

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I fully expected Roberts to pull it off. And since this is Kansas I will not be surprised to see Brownback re-elected as well.

Let’s see Brownback and his Opus Dei pals pray to Jesus to stop the red ink that flows like the dam is broke. Watch what happens when JC and his Sonshine Band don’t intervene.

KansASS gets what it deserves!

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The ground sounds differently…Sending out the batship crazy only riles the little people!

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It sounds like you interviewed the Washington based Roberts political team but didn’t bother talking to Orman.

Roberts is spending a lot of money but he isn’t out of the grave yet.

Orman is still ahead.

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I’ll condense this for everyone – out-of-state secret PAC money, and lots of it.

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He’s done it by playing hard to the conservative base that nearly ousted
him in the Republican primary this summer and relentlessly pounding
Orman as a closet liberal who would boost Obama’s agenda.

That doesn’t make any sense. Why would a liberal tout Obama’s agenda? If there’s anything we’ve learned about Barack Obama during the past five years, it’s that he’s not particularly liberal.

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Those “urban areas” in Kansas are like 90% of the population. They are where Orman has his strength.

I wouldn’t believe everything the Washington based political types told TPM. There doesn’t seem to be much reporting depth to this story and essentially zero reporting from Kansas. Having read the story again it reads like a PR piece, nothing more than some consultants patting themselves on the back.

For example, I am not sure the Washington types realize just how pissed moderate Republicans are at Brownback in KS. That fine line they talk about is exceedingly fine, and the more the bat shit crazy Koch brothers run their hard right ads the more they alienate moderate Republicans. Orman went silent for a week or so while the Republicans spent a ton of money. He has been on the air more the last few days. I think there is a good chance Roberts has seen the high water mark of his campaign.

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You are right, it doesn’t make any sense but then again we are talking about Republicans.

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Say what you will unlike democrats republicans strategize to
come up with winning game plans

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#Lotsofmoney

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“one Republican operative” and “A second GOP strategist” huh? Now what would you expect unnamed sources like that to say at this point in the campaign?

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It has nothing to do with Roberts or what they did. It is a deep red state, he was never going to lose

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Nobody could have predicted that not running a candidate wouldn’t be a successful strategy.

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Again, the politics of Kansas is at play. Kansas is not, and never has been, a hard right state. It is, however, a rock-ribbed Republican state. That is an important distinction. The crazies have been taking over the district party mechanisms for a couple decades, but they don’t really reflect the will of the vast majority of Kansas’ moderate Republicans. Social conservatism plays well here, along with vague allusions to balanced budgets and cutting taxes.

But public schools are a sacred cow, and the faintest whiff of corruption is a death sentence. Brownback has both going against him, along with every newspaper and TV editorial in the state, both Rep and Dem rags, outright calling him a liar day after day on the economy. That makes the Brownback campaign a giant sucking chest wound for Republican candidates this cycle. Roberts may pull it out by a whisker, but Brownback and Kobach are toast.

And, no, we Kansans do not deserve what we currently have. And you snotty East Coasters looking down your noses at us is not a good way to win the kind of governance you claim to want, but it is a damn fine way to burnish your Lotus-eater credentials with the rest of the hipsters in your coop.

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Orman needs to connect Roberts to Brownback and say he wants to do to the US what Brownback has done to Kansas - and “haven’t voters had enough of an old fossil who’s only worried about his own career and doesn’t even live in Kansas?”

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That’s a little harsh - there are still some nice, liberal people in Kansas and everyone is being hurt by the Koch platform.

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