paraphrastic redux - sfa - August 2004 Frank's Kansas Chapter Five - Con Men and Mod Squad --------- [paragraph# (page# first word)] 192 (p89 the) For more than ten years there has been great conflict in the conservative and moderate Kansas Republicans. Although Republicans have always been dominant in Kansas, they have not always been mostly been conservative, and most of those that have held national office have been moderates. 193 (p89 most) Women's suffrage and reforms making abortion more available were legislated earlier in Kansas than in most states. 194 (p90 Kansas) Although religion has always been significant in Kansas, the religious right was insignificant in the 1970s and 1980s. 195 (p91 in) By the late 1980s Kansas had a tradition of pragmatic centrism. At that time it had two Democratic US representatives, and a couple of moderate Republicans. 196 (p91 all) In the 1980s the Kansas state legislature was dominated by moderate Republicans, and it had a Democratic house majority in 1990. There were several right-wing legislators that sometimes attempted to block legislation with filibusters and rule-suspensions. 197 (p91 in) Politics in Kansas changed a lot in the 1990s, promoting those right-wing elements to dominance. 198 (p91 the) The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue started this political shift in Kansas by polarizing the population. 199 (p92 what) Operation Rescue succeeded in Summer 1991 because the clinics in Wichita chose to close for the first week of protests. 200 (p92 the) The big event of the summer was a meeting of over 25,000 persons in the Wichita State University football stadium, at which Pat Robertson, Donald Wildmon, and Joe Scheidler spoke; also some speeches were phoned in by some Operation Rescue leaders in jail. There is some evidence that around two thirds of the audience were from outside Wichita. 201 (p93 Lawrence) That summer in Wichita was a major event in the Kansas conservative movement, because it got a sense of its own strength. 202 (p93 and) Indeed, by six weeks after the rally, 10,000 names had been added to the mail list of Kansans for Life, according to a former president of that organization (Tim Golba), and conservative leadership tapped some of the popular passion and will to act by organizing new Republican precinct committee members. 203 (p94 moderate) Many moderates in Kansas were "horrified" by these events. Some legislators prepared bills which, had they been enacted, would penalize clinic blockers and ensure that abortion would remain legal even if Roe v Wade lost force (this bill failed in the Kansas senate). 204 (p94 the) [Frank describes some pro-moderate reporting and editorializing at the Wichita Eagle] 205 (p95 the) The anti-abortion protesters in Kansas comprised a grassroots movement. 206 (p95 these) Kansas conservatives in significant numbers work hard at politics and many are committed to voting. In 1992 moderate Republicans throughout the heavily populated parts of Kansas were displaced by populist conservatives. 207 (p96 that) That Fall a novice Republican candidate for the Kansas house defeated a Democrat who had held the seat for 14 years and was speaker of the house. 208 (p96 the) The pro-life movement keeps growing despite the fact that it cannot stop the practice of abortion. Similarly, the Populist movement of the 1800s was unable to achieve its goals. Historians say the old Populist movement eventually disappeared because of its "material" futility. 209 (p96 on) The large number of Presidential elections won by Republicans since 1968 is due to the encouragement of a "backlash mentality" by the party. This backlash eventually overtook the the Kansas Republican party when moderates were defeated by little-known challengers running against abortion and taxation and voters organized at fundamentalist churches. 210 (p97 the) Many Kansan moderates resented this. 211 (p97 in) A 1993 sermon delivered near Mission Hills by Robert Meneilly (and printed in the NYT) was frequently excerpted by conservative publications as evidence of mainstream persecution of those conservatives the sermon heatedly criticized as threatening the progress of Christianity and as more dangerous than Communism. 212 (p98 the) In 1994 the elections left no Democrats representing Kansas in the US house. and Tiahrt and Brownback were elected. The "Cons" also came to comprise the majority of the Republicans serving as Kansas state legislators, with the Kansas house leadership positions going to "Cons". 213 (p98 the) In 1996 moderate Bob Dole resigned from the Senate and next election Brownback won the seat, while Brownback's vacated congressional seat was filled by Jim Ryun. Also the two female congressmen from Kansas quit. They were pro-choice moderates replaced by anti-abortion Republicans, making the congressional delegation from Kansas all Republican, all anti-abortion. 214 (p99 the) The "Cons" achieved enough influence to deny the moderate Republican governor a place on the Kansas delegation to the Republican convention where Dole was nominated. 215 (p99 by) In 1999 the "Mods" recovered control of the Kansas Republican party organization, and the "Cons" reacted by starting a "parallel" organization that occasionally held competing events. [footnote cites a URL for the newer organization as http://www.ks-ra.org/Who.htm ] 216 (p99 the) Even now there is rancorous competition, even over places on precinct committees, between Republican "Mods" and "Cons" in Kansas. 217 (p100 all) In 1998 a Democrat was elected to Congress by Republican-dominated Johnson County, and in 2002 a Democrat (Kathleen Sebelius) was elected Governor. These were due to rejection of "Con" candidates by "Mod" Republican voters. Republican Grover Norquist publicly resented the Republicans he considered disloyal in permitting the Governor's election. 218 (p100 it) Most Kansas legislators were Democrats in "1990-92" when the pro-choice legislation passed; later only 36 percent of the house and 25 percent of the senate in Kansas were Democrats. In 2000 GW Bush won Kansas by a greater margin than either GH Bush or Bob Dole did. [Frank finds it ironic or bizarre that the current head of Kansas's Consumer Protection Division ran the Godarchy hotline in 1992.] 219 (p101 the) Despite their legislative dominance in Kansas, "Cons" have not been able to prevent abortion, establish voucher programs or prevent schools form teaching evolution. These cultural issues seem to be irresoluble by state power. Yet these, and other cultural issues, form the basis of voter appeal for the "Cons". Politicians have also grandstanded with issues which are beyond the reach of Kansas or which affect extremely few individuals in Kanas, such as prohibition of cloning and, in other countries, sex slavery and persecution of Christians. A tactical political value of taking stands on such provocative but intractable issues is that politicians whose rouse passionate support with them can still avoid being "identified" with the state, which is held to blame. 220 (p101 in) The "Cons" have materially succeeded in legislating one thing: tax reduction. Consequently, Kansas became quite vulnerable to economic downturn and is now in fiscal crisis. Thus, as conservatives intended, the state must diminish. 221 (p102 when) The Republican party of Kansas is unusual for its internal class war. 222 (p102 class) Class resentment has gone mostly unremarked by "mainstream observers" of the conservative movement, although it has been expressed consistently since the "great backlash" began [quote George Wallace]. 223 (p103 the) "Mods" ordinarily deny they are largely of a different social class from the "Cons", although they acknowledge a geographically correlated (Johnson County's older, inner suburbs, where "Mods" "tend" to live, versus newer, outer suburbs) distinction in views on subjects such as abortion, guns and evolution. 224 (p103 ah) The editor of the Johnson County Sun, Steve Rose [Frank says in the previous paragraph that Rose is a leader of the "Mods"], does not understand why the parts of the county not dominated by the "Mods" are different, why many of inhabitants are as "right-wing" as they are. 225 (p103 when) And yet the difference is obviously one of class, as is evident from the differences in wealth. The "Mods" are haves. 226 (p104 I) [nothing significant - does Frank mean by "probably less likely" and "probably more likely" that he is speculating about statistics?] 227 (p104 this) Over the last ten years, the strongest support from Johnson County for the conservative faction has been from the parts with least income per person and lowest median housing values. The highly organized and powerful moderates have received strong support from the parts with high income and property values. Lower income and property values in an area is an indicator of a more blue-collar population. 228 (p104 this) This is the reverse of how Kansas was 30 years ago. [I don't understand what Frank means by "complete and utter negation" of Kansas 100 yrs ago.] 229 (p104 when) [nothing significant] 230 (p105 but) Many in Mission Hills are moderates who support gay rights, are pro-choice, accept church-state separation, and yet are more likely than the "Cons" to benefit from state tax reductions legislated by the "Cons", and from the weaker federal regulation desired by the "Cons". 231 (p105 moderate) Every "Mod" Republican running against a more conservative candidate has received more campaign contribution money than the conservative opponents. Many Kansans think that in Kansas the "Mods" and the millionaires are the same. 232 (p106 the) There are many working-class individuals in Kansas who are "more Republican" than their bosses. 233 (p106 Dwight) Dwight Sutherland, Jr., is a lawyer in Mission Hills. He is deeply conservative and very critical of moderate Republicans. He thinks that there is a class-war between moderate and conservative Republicans, and that the "Mods" are snobs toward the working-class newcomers, many of whom are from "low-caste" churches. 234 (p107 this) Sutherland says this is a country-wide phenomenon. [Frank describes the content of a photocopy provided by Sutherland of an article from a magazine called Brandywine about rich fox hunters.] 235 (p108 the) A significant number of Kansas conservatives call Republicans moderates "liberal", and consider Kansas as conforming to Ann Coulter's and Rush Limbaugh's descriptions of struggle between "common people" and "haughty know-it-all" powerful liberals. 236 (p108 the) Many of the "Mods" hold conservative economic views while exhibiting stereo-typically liberal tastes in culture and consumption, as well as holding liberal views on matters such as the Patriot Act, immigrant rights and toleration or acceptance of gay persons, 237 (p108 but) Despite liberal views on non-economic matters, these people are not liberal. There is a sense in which persons can be called "corporate" rather than "liberal" and these people are corporate in this sense. In part this sense of being corporate comprises having one "habits and opinions" derive from standards of "courtesy and taste" prevailing among white-collar workers. To improve profits, business culture has melded with "counterculture". 238 (p109 and) There is a "class war" between "Cons" and "Mods". The "Cons" encourage deregulation and privatization, from which the "Mods" benefit more than others do. 239 (p109 this) Kansas hosts an extreme instance of a populist uprising that occurs throughout America, but which benefits only those that are normally supposed to be its targets. =========