Dammit, I really need to get ready for tonight's blogger gathering in the wild north of this state, but friends keep pulling me back into the ethertubes. Fucking great post by Skippy:

via katieallisongranju (didn't susan st. james and jane curtain star in that?) via mcjoan at dkos: a kansas editorial (by steve rose, chairman of the johnson county sun) explaining why the publicans suck:

in the 56 years we have been publishing in johnson county, this basically has been a republican newspaper. in the old days, before the republican civil war that fractured the party, we were traditional republicans. that is, we happily endorsed jan meyers for congress, bob dole for u.s. senate, nancy kassebaum for u.s. senate; virtually every republican state legislator from here, with a few rare exceptions; and most governors, although we did endorse the conservative democrats george and bob docking and john carlin.

the point is, i can name on two hands over a half century the number of democrats we have endorsed for public office.

this year, we will do something different. you will read why we are endorsing kathleen sebelius for governor and mark parkinson for lieutenant governor; dennis moore to be re-elected to the u.s. congress; paul morrison for kansas attorney general; and a slew of local democratic state legislative candidates. these are not liberal democrats. they are what fairly can be described as conservative democrats, and we can prove that in our forthcoming endorsements…

but the shift, frankly, shocks me...
[ed. note: we didn't know there was an 'f' in that word.]

...because i have pulled the lever over and over since my first vote in 1968 for republicans…

so, what in the world has happened?

the republican party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

you almost cannot be a victorious traditional republican candidate with mainstream values in johnson county or in kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. they lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

to win a republican primary, the candidate must move to the right.

what does to-the-right mean?

it means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

it means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

it means anti-stem cell research.

it means ridiculing global warming.

it means gay bashing. not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

it means immigrant bashing. i'm talking about the viciousness.

it means putting religion in public schools. not just prayer.

it means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

it means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.

note, i did not say it means "anti-abortion," because i do not find that position repugnant, at all. i respect that position.

but everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the republican party i once knew.

the editors of this humble site begrudgingly agree with mr. rose about the old school republicans. say what you will about the new version, the old version gave a balance to this country, and has some viable positions.

however, we insist that steve rose looks like lorne michael's uncle from the mafia.

If this sort of thing keeps up, I may actually start to get excited about the elections. When they've lost Kansas, you know they've lost a great deal more.