Friday, November 02, 2018

Vote for Kelly? It’s a no-brainer—keep Kobach out!


By SJ Otto
The big race here in Kansas is the contest for governor. Some races, such as the James Thompson-Ron Estes race will affect the whole country. President Donald Trump needs all the yes-men he can get. He will need and depend on mindless flunkies such as Estes. And Estes is just right for the job—he is a passionless dupe who lacks any real ideas or agenda of his own. Less nation-wide is the governor race.
Republican Kris Kobach is running against Democrat Laura Kelly. Kobach has made quite a name for himself. He started his career out by traveling around the country and looking for ways to suppress voting, with such restrictions as requiring IDs to vote.

According to CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin on Kobach: “Kris has devoted his career to stopping black people and poor people from voting.”
 Such opinions on Kobach’s career are common on the internet. According to The New York Times:  
“Kris Kobach Is the G.O.P. at Its Worst”
And I believe that is right. I’ve already had a few articles on Kobach and the governor’s race. By now it should be a no-brainer. There are the usual hot button issues, anti-abortion, gun rights and anti-gay bigotry—all issues championed by the Republicans. But the real issue in this campaign is Sam Brownback and his legacy. Those of us who lived through Brownback’s miss-rule remember how it was. Schools were seriously damaged. There were shortages of supplies, teachers were fired, days were lengthened to try and save money. The states infrastructure was damaged. All this was based on Brownback’s huge tax cuts for businesses. It was a tax experiment that went terribly wrong. Despite the failures of these policies, Brownback would not turn back. He was an ideologue. He was determined to stay the course and over eight years, he destroyed the state’s ability to function.
It is hard to imagine that anyone would want to return to those dark times, but Kobach does. He is determined to bring back the destructive tax cuts that brought this sate to its knees. He doesn’t care what the cost, he is determined to cater to the corporations he has put so much faith in. No matter how much damage those tax cuts cause, he is determined to bring them back. He also wants to follow Brownback’s determination to destroy any kind of health care for the poor. Brownback refused to expand Medicaid, as other states had done. He sent back grant money that President Barack Obama sent to the state of Kansas because he wanted nothing to do with Obamacare (Affordable Care Act.)
Kobach wants to follow in Brownback’s foot-steps. He wants to give us eight more years of state destruction based on a seriously flawed ideology. It is hard to imagine anyone who wants to return to the bad ol’ days we just went through. But Kobach is in a dead heat in the polls. For whatever reason, many Kansans want to return us to those miserable days.   
To avoid this disaster we need everyone who isn’t crazy to go out and vote for Laura Kelly. She is a moderate centrist and has something Kobach seriously lacks—common sense.
Idiots of a feather flock together!

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