Roberts can't make the case for himself, so his campaign is going to go negative on his opponent instead
Based on
this from
The Hill, it sounds like Republicans have given up on convincing Kansas voters that Republican Sen. Pat Roberts deserves re-election:
With a two-man race now looking all but certain, national Republicans are planning a scorched-earth offensive to frame Sen. Pat Roberts’s (R-Kan.) independent opponent, Greg Orman, as a shady businessman.
Their first volley this weekend: reports that Orman represented Rajat Gupta — the former Goldman Sachs board member who incurred criminal and civil fines of more than $18 million and was jailed earlier this year for securities fraud — on a two-person board of a Cayman Islands private equity partnership.
Kansas Republicans say to expect more information on his business dealings to come out in the coming weeks — likely as a systematic drip-drip of information, to keep the issue alive throughout the race.
Given the breadth of Pat Roberts' unpopularity—he
not only loses 15 percent of "very conservative" voters to Orman but 30 percent of "somewhat conservative" ones as well—it's not surprising that Republicans seem to have settled on a strategy of trying to make Orman unelectable instead of boosting Roberts.
But here's the thing: It's September 23. It's awfully late to be making these sorts of charges, especially without any sort of news hook that can fuel multiple cycles of news coverage and when it's obvious that the reason for the attacks is that Roberts can't make a good argument for himself. Nonetheless, this is the only option on the table, because if the campaign continues to be focused on whether Roberts deserves re-election, he's not going to win.