Not Phil Kline:
For the second time in two years, voters in Kansas have handed a stinging defeat to Phill Kline, an anti-abortion crusader who’s reputation was made attempting to prosecute the state’s abortion providers, first as state attorney general, and then, after he lost re-election to that post, as a district attorney in suburban Kansas City.
With all of the vote counted, Steve Howe trounced Kline by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent in unofficial returns to select the Republican candidate for district attorney in Johnson County, Kan., a well-off suburb of Kansas City. Howe garnered 33,260 votes to Kline’s 22,188, according to final unofficial returns.
Howe will face Democrat Rick Guinn in the Nov. 4 general election.
Abortion played a key role in the race because Kline is the first prosecutor since Roe v. Wade to file criminal charges against a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Abortion opponents from outside Kansas are thought to have spent more than $100,000 to keep Kline’s candidacy alive.
/schadenfreude
Joy
Maybe there is hope in the world that people are starting to wake up and see what this far right wing is doing to women’s rights. Not to mention the fact invasion of privacy, he’s certifiably nuts ……
PaulW
Is it me or has abortion finally dropped off the radar as a single-issue topic that can keep the religious right going as a political force? That they can’t even win a primary in a conservative state like Kansas…
I mean, look at the polling on “Issues that wanna make you vote in 2008”. It’s economy, oil/energy, Iraq, health care, jobs, Iraq, mortgages, Iraq, and more Iraq. Abortion doesn’t even crack the top 10 anymore.
Dork
Cole, before you come to this blog and decide to post, you really should brush up on your blockquoting skillz.
See the “B-Quote” button, all greyish and retan’gular?
Dreggas
Part of the defeat of Kline, or so I have read elsewhere, was that people in Kansas were embarrassed by his sorry ass. Kinda like they get embarrassed when the school boards try and repeal the teaching of evolution. One year it’s repealed, the next it’s reinstated.
They don’t want to be seen as being all like Kline, or being all backwards, ignorant hicks. As a result they are trying to overcome their embarrassment and get it right. According to some reports a lot of Kansas republicans have even changed parties because the repub party in Kansas might as well be headed by Fred Phelps.
This, to me, is why Obama’s line about taking pride in their ignorance may be one of the best of the campaign. If people start seeing the GOP as out of touch and completely ignorant (which of course they are) they won’t want to be associated with it. It really does boil down to people not wanting to be seen as stupid.
Incertus
One can hope, just as one can hope that same-sex marriage has followed the same fate. The proposition in California to overturn the Supreme Court decision is currently getting its ass kicked.
The Moar You Know
So the anti-reproductive right folks carpetbagged the shit out of this election and still couldn’t even win the primary? Very good news, and a good sign that the Uterine Nazis are getting increasingly desperate.
Kansas badly needs to do some work on their electoral districts. That the majority of Kansans are sane is evidenced by their excellent choice in governors; that the state has been gerrymandered beyond help is evidenced by the continued political career of the monstrous Brownback.
Kansans are embarassed by recent shenanigans regarding their school boards. They should be. Such decisions have consequences; we look very hard at the resumes of people who have been educated in certain states – my company requires people who have been educated with a background in real science, not rank superstition.
Nikki
Karma, bitches!
zzyzx
KJL’s advice for McCain:
Please please PLEASE McCain! Start attacking Planned Parenthood! That’ll help you out so much!
What’s with the extra l in Phill anyway?
scott
Anytime a Kansas political issue makes the news and everybody wonders about the people there, grab Thomas Frank’s Book “What’s The Matter With Kansas.” It’s an easy read and nails, well, what’s the matter with KS.
KRK
I love, love, love hearing about wingnuts wasting their money on failed political campaigns and stupid props. Less money for them to use pushing their next bad idea.
I hope KJL was a major contributor.
Tom
Now that Kline doesn’t have a political gig lined up I think we should start a drive of Kline for VP. Even more of a tool than Mittens.
jrg
“Conservatives” jumped the shark with their wars on birth control and gays. I might not agree with them on abortion, but at least they had something resembling a point. What points they did have are now awash in a sea of bullsh*t.
It appears that being seen as extremists lacking any common sense is decremental to the causes these wingers support. Whoduh thunk it?
Too bad, so sad. I do think that we will see an increase in violence against women’s clinics as it becomes more apparent that the wingers are losing the culture war.
jrg
s/decremental/detrimental/
Spill chicken work good. Need Grandma Chicken!
les
Unfortunately, “my constituency is jesus (ntz’sym)” Brownback is a senator–he’s what you get from the state as a whole. Kline got whacked in Johnson County which, while deplorably christofascist, does at least notice when they’re a national laughingstock.
ed
Every state can point to crazies who have been elected to office. Overall, Kansas has done fairly well in its politicians. We have never been as conservative as people think. Moderate governors have been the norm since I started following state politics in the 1960’s, including Robert Docking, John Carlin, Joan Finney and current governor Kathleen Sebelius, all four Democrats, with only three Republican governors elected in that same 40 year time frame.
Brownback is a Jesus freak, but most of our Senators have not been of that ilk. Look no further than Bob Dole; if he saw Jesus along side the road on fire, he wouldn’t have bothered to stop to piss on him. We currently have 4 U.S. Representatives, two Democrats and two Republicans, not exactly what one would expect of a totally flaming Red state.
And if you had actually read “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” you would know that the material was primarily about Kansas, but was intended as a metaphor to explain why people everywhere frequently vote against their own best interests.
The state school board, a do nothing entity no one with political ambition would have ever bothered to look at twice previously, has been highjacked twice by crazies and embarrassed the hell out of the entire state. We can admittedly be a little strange in Kansas, but our politics are not as warped as easy stereotyping would imply.
Mike
Kline got beaten by a 50-year-old dead guy?
Brett
They failed, but I doubt Kline will give up. He’s determined to keep going until he’s a part-time burger flipper at Wendy’s on the night shift with the drive-thru.