Longtime GOP-Favoring Kansas Newspaper Endorses Democrats

Mcjoan at dailykos calls attention to this editorial by Steve Rose, chairman of the Johnson County Sun, in Overland Park, Kansas. In the 56 years we have been publishing in Johnson County, this basically has been a Republican newspaper. (…) 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 I could not help but put in perspective a more global phenomenon that has led us to re-evaluate our traditional support for Republicans. (…) 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. That's why, in the absence of so-called traditional Republican candidates, the choice comes down to right-wing Republicans or conservative Democrats.