{"id":9013,"date":"2017-04-10T22:16:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T03:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=9013"},"modified":"2017-04-10T22:16:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T03:16:10","slug":"bated-breath-for-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/10\/bated-breath-for-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Bated Breath For Tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"

The political punditry has been rumbling about the race to replace Mike Pompeo, now the CIA Director, who had occupied the Representative’s seat for Kansas District #4, generally considered to be a safe GOP<\/strong><\/em> seat. In fact, Pompeo had won it with more than 60% of the vote the three times he’s run for the seat, the last being the 2016 cycle (Ballotpedia<\/strong><\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

I haven’t run across any recent public polls of the current replacement race between GOPer<\/strong><\/em> Ron Estes (winner of two previous statewide elections) and Democrat<\/strong><\/em> James Thompson, apparently with little political experience, but the Wichita Eagle<\/strong><\/em> notes<\/a> signs of panic in the Kansas GOP<\/strong><\/em>:<\/p>\n

National Republicans are wading into a Kansas congressional race few analysts thought would be competitive ahead of Tuesday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas will join Republican candidate Ron Estes at an airport rally Monday in Wichita, a day before voters in southern Kansas head to the polls to pick a new congressman. Vice President Mike Pence is also scheduled to record a robocall on Estes\u2019 behalf, according to a state party official.<\/p>\n

Cruz\u2019s appearance comes on the heels of last-minute spending on television ads by the National Republican Congressional Committee and a fundraising push by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on Estes\u2019 behalf.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Parties often run private polls, and perhaps the GOP<\/strong><\/em> is unhappy with some private results. For me, it’ll be a fascinating insight into how much damage has been dealt the Republican brand. The first source is, of course, Trump, who has wallowed about, failed to run a competent Administration, and then lied about it. His one success has been the completion of the nomination of Gorsuch to SCOTUS<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

But, quite possibly more damaging, has been the activities of the House GOP <\/strong><\/em>members. Representative Nunes forced to recuse himself from the Russian investigation; Representative Chaffetz trying to sell off public lands; and Speaker of the House Ryan failing spectacularly not only in his political job of ramming through the retraction of the ACA<\/strong><\/em>, but even in having a basic understanding of the workings of insurance. These visible lessons in how ideological extremists behave may be a learning moment for voters who consider themselves conservatives – and are discovering those who claimed to fellow conservatives are actually extremists.<\/p>\n

But this is all hypothetical. Perhaps Estes will also win 60+% of the vote. Perhaps Estes has a reputation as a moderate. Whatever the result, a lesson will be learned by someone. And by me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The political punditry has been rumbling about the race to replace Mike Pompeo, now the CIA Director, who had occupied the Representative’s seat for Kansas District #4, generally considered to be a safe GOP seat. In fact, Pompeo had won it with more than 60% of the vote the three \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9014,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9013\/revisions\/9014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}