The Kansas City Star is reporting on growing concerns about Kansas Republican, for Secretary of State for Kansas, and purveyor of dubious information concerning immigrants Kris Kobach:
National Republicans are prepared to intervene in the Kansas Senate primary to ensure that conservative firebrand Kris Kobach does not win the party’s nomination should he run, multiple sources told the Kansas City Star.
Kobach said last week that he is still “actively considering” a bid for the U.S. Senate next year in Kansas. The seat will come open with the retirement of Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, 83, who announced in January that he would not run for re-election.
Any anti-Kobach efforts by groups such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee or the Senate Leadership Fund likely would take the form of undermining Kobach without actively supporting any of the other GOP candidates running against him.
Presuming he does decide to run in the Senate primary, his result will be diagnostic for the state of the Kansas Republic Party. If he wins or shows well, it may well indicate that the Party continues its right-wing plunge into irrelevancy, while a rejection might indicate an incipient return to sanity – and a rejection of Trump and his incoherent agenda.
I expect the former. Remember, in the last few months four active Kansas GOP legislators not only dropped out of the Republican Party, but joined the Democrats. This indicates to me that the Kansas Republican Party is not susceptible to reformation, and will have to burn itself out through repeated failures and defections.
Whatever the result, it may bode for the national party as well.
