As we all know, one of the many Republican Senators retiring at the end of this cycle is Sam Brownback. Senator Brownback briefly embarrassed himself with a pitiful presidential campaign in 2007. He made Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson look popular in comparison, and dropped out 3 months before the Iowa caucus.
The shame of it all was too great for him to continue to show his face in Washington, so he's retiring and considering a run for Governor.
And now a complete and utter moran has announced that he will be running to replace him.
First of all, I'd like to point out that I find it fascinating that Santorum results after a session of Brownbacking (I hope I'm not out of line here; I think I'll claim without evidence that Dan Savage said it first or at least inspired it)
I am talking, of course, about Representative Jerry Moran, who currently represents the vast expanse of rural nowhere in Western Kansas. That area is very heavily Republican. Barack Obama lost his district 68-30 last November; it will elect a Republican to replace him.
However, despite all of this, Representative Moran is quite moderate by Kansas Republican if not national Republican standards. National Journal put him as more liberal than 34.7% of the House in 2007, for instance, and Thomas Frank notably mentioned him as being relatively moderate in "What's the Matter with Kansas?"
On the other hand, Kansas Republicans are so conservative that Rev. Fred Phelps ran for office as a Democrat.
And Moran is hardly hated by conservative Republicans.
At any rate, should no other high-profile Republican get into the race (Ryun, Tiahrt, Graves, etc.), he's likely to be the nominee.
Update: Apparently Tiahrt is also a go; he speaks in tongues and thus will be a tough primary opponent.
In which case he's pretty much guaranteed to be the next Senator; 1932 was the last time a Democrat got elected to the Senate in Kansas, and if it happens again, it'll be against a fire-breathing far-right crazy person, not against Jerry Moran.
While not precisely relevant to my diary, I would like to take this opportunity to present this photo I found of the famous pro-Iraq War protester. It seems that he's begun threatening gubernatorial candidates and Netroots courter (and McAuliffe opponent) Brian Moran:
Someone should look into this nefarious Photoshopping attempt!