KS-SEN 2020 Megathread: Marshall overperforms and wins

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kobach isn't going to be the nominee. Roger Marshall is raising a lot more money and will most likely get Trump's endorsement.

Bummer.

I get that the margin would be closer with Kobach but I don't want that idiot anywhere near the senate

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kobach isn't going to be the nominee. Roger Marshall is raising a lot more money and will most likely get Trump's endorsement.

Bummer.

I get that the margin would be closer with Kobach but I don't want that idiot anywhere near the senate

It's not just "that the margin would be closer." It's that race would legitimately be winnable.

I don't think it's winnable even with Kobach, but let's stop pretending that Senator Kris Kobach would be any more dangerous than Senator Roger Marshall in terms of voting record.

We literally just beat Kobach 2 years ago. We can do it again this year.

yeah but that was a state race as opposed to a national race and in a D+9 race as well

the difference between state and federal in Kansas is probably wider than any other region/state of the country besides New England.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kobach isn't going to be the nominee. Roger Marshall is raising a lot more money and will most likely get Trump's endorsement.

Bummer.

I get that the margin would be closer with Kobach but I don't want that idiot anywhere near the senate

It's not just "that the margin would be closer." It's that race would legitimately be winnable.

I don't think it's winnable even with Kobach, but let's stop pretending that Senator Kris Kobach would be any more dangerous than Senator Roger Marshall in terms of voting record.

We literally just beat Kobach 2 years ago. We can do it again this year.

yeah but that was a state race as opposed to a national race and in a D+9 race as well

the difference between state and federal in Kansas is probably wider than any other region/state of the country besides New England.

This. People should be happy this voter fraud lunatic is not able to get in the senate

fun fact: Kansas Democrats party switched in droves in 2016 in order to drive out Brownback GOPers, and they bolstered the ranks of the moderate wing of the KS GOP considerably, in what amounted to a counter-reaction to a state where the fulcrum has long been in the palm of the moderate GOP.  Kansas has a natural GOP majority, but the GOP itself is split in two longstanding factions.
Kansas in practice is a three-party system - conservative Rs, moderate Rs, and Democrats.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kobach isn't going to be the nominee. Roger Marshall is raising a lot more money and will most likely get Trump's endorsement.

Bummer.

I get that the margin would be closer with Kobach but I don't want that idiot anywhere near the senate

It's not just "that the margin would be closer." It's that race would legitimately be winnable.

I don't think it's winnable even with Kobach, but let's stop pretending that Senator Kris Kobach would be any more dangerous than Senator Roger Marshall in terms of voting record.

We literally just beat Kobach 2 years ago. We can do it again this year.

yeah but that was a state race as opposed to a national race and in a D+9 race as well

the difference between state and federal in Kansas is probably wider than any other region/state of the country besides New England.

This. People should be happy this voter fraud lunatic is not able to get in the senate

fun fact: Kansas Democrats party switched in droves in 2016 in order to drive out Brownback GOPers, and they bolstered the ranks of the moderate wing of the KS GOP considerably, in what amounted to a counter-reaction to a state where the fulcrum has long been in the palm of the moderate GOP.  Kansas has a natural GOP majority, but the GOP itself is split in two longstanding factions.
Kansas in practice is a three-party system - conservative Rs, moderate Rs, and Democrats.

Very anecdotal but my roommate from kanas is very liberal but him and all of the other liberal people he knows (he lives in the KS area) are registered Democrats to do just what you said, helping moderates get elected

You can also notice that Ds do especially well in two different circumstances - 1) the two wings of the GOP are divided (this is how Sebelius won in 2002) and 2) when the moderates are fed up with the conservatives taking things too far so they vote Dem instead (which is how Kelly was elected in 2018, as part of the backlash against Brownback).
Kansas for some particular reason is a party system all to its own, with no perfect equivalents anywhere else in the country. If I had to point to any single reason, it'd be Kansas being the epitome of ancestral R and not being D-leaning in any real sense under any past American political alignment meaning that the resulting dominant-party-system became highly attuned to GOP internal divisions. A reinforcing side-effect of this is that moderate factions became highly tolerant of GOP partisan affiliation.
It's a mid-point really, between a competitive state like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on one end and a past one-party system in the Deep South in the days of the Jim Crow.
Whats the matter with Kansas?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Kansas reminds me of New England politics.

It's probably no accident that this is the case. Kansas' culture was shaped in its early years by ancestrally R migrants from the Great Lakes and other free states, and those people in turn could trace a lot of their heritage to New England.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The KS GOP moderate branch needs to be cleansed with fire, and that's the end of it. Tim Huelskamp 2020.

Wow how dare a moderate state have a moderate ruling party!

Moderate? Kansas voted for Trump by 20 points.

Moderate very partisan states still vote for their pres nominees by huge margins. Utah voted for Trump bigly and it’s a very moderate state. The same can be said for Dem states like it too. Maryland is a moderate very blue state and Clinton won it by 27.

Conflating partisanship and moderation is not just incorrect, its an impendiment to understanding politics.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

this could only be a real race if Kobach wins the nomination, in which case it is quite competitive.  Otherwise, nah.