It is possible to be too extreme or incompetent for any particular US state. Kansas is the most R state in the Union that has no large Mormon population and is in no way Southern... and yet its incumbent Governor can go too far to the Right.
Kansas politics has long been a contest between factions within the Republican Party... and the Hard Right has overpowered the Dole/Kassebaum wing and begun to act with consummate arrogance.
If the Dole/Kassebaum wing splits off from the GOP, then it might find itself a new home -- the Democratic Party. The GOP could win landslides so long as it still got the "Rockefeller Republicans"... but once they came to dislike the racists and Bible-thumpers who took over the GOP they found themselves welcome in the Democratic Party.
Don't forget Kathleen Sebelius was the Governor before Brownback so Kansas has had a Dem Governor recently.True.
Sebelius was an unusually-well qualified candidate for Governor. The other side works too.
What happened is not that the demographic disappeared, as happened with New Deal Democrats and will happen with the Religious Right (those are aging fast without replacement). "Rockefeller Republicans" were more a demographic of people highly educated and relatively liberal on everything but crime and drugs. Nelson Rockefeller may be long gone, but the sorts of people who voted for his type are being replaced. If anything the Democratic Party is becoming more like the old "Rockefeller Republicans". Figure that relatively Asian-American and Latin-American voters in the middle class generally fit this demographic.
Fair assessment, so far as I can tell. Maybe the Peter Principle strikes again in that some legislator makes a horrible Governor or President. Maybe Brownback rode the "Wave of the Future" after the 2010 midterm elections... and that wave has begun to hit the shore. Just because a wave approaching a California beach seems headed to Colorado does not mean that that wave will get anywhere near Colorado.
