The Guardian of London has a really good piece up today entitled "
Democrats dare to dream of recapturing the Bush heartland", focusing on the growing number of Republican moderates who are defecting from their party to run for office as centrist Democrats. Gee Toto, just maybe we're not in Kansas any more. Let's hope.
The squat, bunker-like building in a south Topeka suburb does not look like a place to turn American politics on its head. Nor does Mark Parkinson, a tall, affable man, look too much like a revolutionary. But here, deep in the American heartland, are the warning signs of a political earthquake.
The two-storey office block is Parkinson's campaign headquarters as he runs as Democrat candidate for deputy governor. So far, so normal. Except that only a few weeks ago Parkinson was a Republican. In fact, he was Kansas Republican party chairman.
More excerpts after the break.
His defection to the Democrats sent shockwaves through a state deeply associated with the national Republican cause and the evangelical conservatives at its base. Nor was it just Parkinson's leave-taking that left Republicans spluttering with rage and talking of betrayal. It was that as he left Parkinson lambasted his former party's obsession with conservative and religious issues such as gay marriage, evolution and abortion.
Sitting in his headquarters, the new Democrat is sticking to his guns. Republicans in Kansas, he says, have let down their own people. 'They were fixated on ideological issues that really don't matter to people's everyday lives. What matters is improving schools and creating jobs,' he said. 'I got tired of the theological debate over whether Charles Darwin was right.'
This is music to Democratic ears and has profound potential implications for November's mid-term elections.
snip
But in a swath of heartland states such as Kansas, Democrats are seeing the first signs of their party's rebirth. Parkinson is not alone in switching sides. In Virginia, Jim Webb, a one-time Reagan official, is seeking to be a Democrat senator. In South Carolina, top Republican prosecutor Barney Giese has defected after a spat with conservatives. Back in Kansas another top Republican, Paul Morrison, also joined the Democrats and is challenging a Republican to be the state attorney-general.
Democrats are hoping that the Republican party of President George W Bush has passed its high-water mark. That, faced with disaster in Iraq, a host of domestic troubles and terrible opinion poll ratings, they can start to retake power in November. From there they can start to take aim at the White House itself. They hope the powerful conservative movement born in states such as Kansas will also die there.
An upbeat mood prevails at the monthly meeting of the Shawnee County Democratic party. The talk over iced tea in the dining room of the Topeka Ramada Hotel was of Iraq, family, friends and sports.
It has never been easy being a Democrat in Kansas, but things are looking a little brighter. 'I know a lot of registered Republicans who no longer agree with what's going on,' said Charlie Snow, a real estate manager. Wearing a T-shirt with a picture of George Bush Senior and the slogan 'I should have pulled out', Snow is not a typical Kansas voter, but he and his fellow Shawnee County Democrats see unaccustomed prospects. 'We have always been the underdog, but recently actions of the President and the Republicans have made it a lot easier to be a Democrat in Kansas,' Snow said.
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One of the key reasons Kansas Democrats are in fighting mood is their governor, Kathleen Sibelius. Sibelius's vote represents an island of Democratic blue in a sea of Republican red on the political map, and she has impressed by reaching the middle-ground voters in a startlingly successful first term.
Shunning the hot-button social issues, she has focused on education, jobs and health. This has earned her approval ratings touching 68 per cent in a state that was overwhelmingly pro-Bush in 2004.
Sibelius has cracked the political holy grail: persuading heartland Republicans to vote Democrat. 'Her style works here, and then bringing over Parkinson to the Democrats has been the coup of all coups,' said Professor Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University near Topeka.
As the Democrats enjoy a resurgence, the Republicans are in disarray. Parkinson's defection encouraged other moderates to abandon a party controlled by right-wing religious zealots. In political terms they are called Rinos, or Republicans in Name Only. If enough Rinos desert, the strict ideologues in the party are likely to drift further right. 'A number of conservatives are actually pleased that the moderates are leaving the Republican party. That really could spell trouble,' Beatty said
snip
The defections across the country have been spurred mostly by a reaction to the extremism of the right. The future, as Kansas predicts it, lies in the middle ground for the first party to stake a claim to it. 'That is the absolute lesson. No party is going to win an election by being on the edges. The first to go to the middle ground will win,' Gates said.
snip
So it could mean the centrist card is the Democrat lesson for 2008, electing someone from a southern or midwestern state who already occupies middle ground - candidates such as Mark Warner, former governor of Virginia, Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa, and Evan Bayh, a senator from Indiana. If Democrats want to become the dominant party again, the revolution must begin in such places as Kansas. And Democrats in Kansas, deep in reddest America, are dreaming of a time when the whole country turns blue.