The left-ing of the Bible Belt

Republicans aren't all psychotic right-wing nutjobs that hate sexuality, evolution, and darkies. And here's some proof.

It's a story about how more and more, moderate Kansas Republicans are beginning to run as Democrats. For example, there's Mark Parkinson, the former chair of the Kansas GOP. He's fed up with how the party's been pushing divisive social issues like intelligent design, and he decided to do something about it. He ran for lieutenant governor- as a Democrat.

"There's been a long series of Republican infighting over issues that do not affect people's daily lives," Parkinson explains. "I'm 49. I got tired of fighting about whether Charles Darwin was right when I was 14 or 15. I'm not spending the rest of my life on that issue."

The article discusses how Kansas' governor, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, is using the rift between social moderates and extremists to give the Dems a much-needed boost. In the process, she's recruited a good number of former Republicans to run as moderate Democrats. Parkinson is only one of them.

In 2002, [Sebelius] beat a conservative Republican nominee by appealing to voters who care more about schools and taxes than abortion and evolution -- and by recruiting a centrist Republican to run as her lieutenant governor. Four years later, Sebelius has again tapped a moderate Republican as her running mate, and this time eight other party-switchers will join her on the Democratic ticket. Depending on whom you believe, in her cross-the-aisle raids Sebelius has either found an effective strategy for turning Kansas a little less red, or she has used her personal popularity to mask the slow decline of her party.

Paul Morrison, another former GOPer-turned-Dem, is running for attorney general. He said he was fed up when

incumbent Phill Kline had turned the attorney general's office into a platform for partisan politics. Kline made headlines when he attempted to access the medical records of Kansas women who'd had abortions. "So much time and energy," Morrison says, "is being spent on pursuing a narrow partisan agenda that most people don't agree with."

About another convert-

For Cindy Neighbor, who's running for the state House, the decision to ditch the Republican Party came when she looked at a platform that included opposition to stem cell research and support for school vouchers and the teaching of intelligent design. "Even when they say they're a wide-open party," Neighbor laments, "it's, 'If you don't agree with us, you're not one of us.' It was about being able to have some freedom to be an individual rather than just a puppet."

This, to me, spells hope. The traditional base on which Reagan drew 20 years ago is realizing that their party has warped into something they don't like, something strange and dogmatic and completely removed from reason. These are the people who are Republicans because they don't like excessive legislation or overtaxation. These are the people who pledge allegiance to the flag but believe so strongly in personal privacy rights that they don't particularly care whether their neighbors are queer. They, like the left, are more interested in having a dialogue and getting things done than they are about condemning godless heathens. They're the kind of people that are open and care about their communities, and they're one of the reasons that Bush hasn't completely won yet, and they're why he never will.