On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, J. Tyler wrote:
> When one asks what is the matter with Kansas, I think one is asking how a
> state that was once firmly aligned ideologically with the liberal
> Northeast, including on matters such as abolition of slavery,
Actually it was famously divided even then. Remember Bloody Kansas? Chuck0's outsiders have been there since the very beginning making trouble on both sides. Many people argue the civil war in Kansas was the real start of the larger Civil War.
The only time Kansas was on the left was during the Progressive/Populist era which is the exception that proves the rule: that was the one period when both fundamentalism and the South were on the left.
This of course totally agrees with your main point that the real problem with Kansas has always been its unacknowledged border state position.
The real change in Kansas is not that it's Republican, but that its Republicans, like all Republicans, have drastically changed their center of gravity since they incorporated the South. The most famous Kansan Republican is Ike, who today is most people's model of a reasonable centrist. His brothers, all Republicans, stretched from liberal Milton who was almost a Democrat, heading up FDR's education department, to reactionary Edmund who was to the right of Patton. Back then Milton and Ike were famous and nobody heard of Edmund. Now the Edmunds seem to be all you hear about.
But to be fair, even back then, Ike was parachuted in on his party which was mainly made out of reactionary Edmunds -- people who not only oppposed the UN, they opposed NATO. The reason an Edmund couldn't win back then was because the South was so solidly Democratic that it was like spotting them points. The reason they can now is because the South is Republican and the shoe is on the other foot. That changed background is all the difference. Kansas is simply the gestalt shape that looks different against that different background.
Michael