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The KDP's churlish glee about the converts may not entirely be spin-miestering donkey dung, however.
"It's been almost 10 years since you've seen such a configuration of forces that would suggest people should switch parties. The last time we had a big bias toward one party or another like this was 1994, when the Republicans took back the House," says Haider-Markel. And this time, "Democrats are far more mobilized to vote."
Suggest that sort of political calculus to Kent Goyen, and he bristles at even being labeled a politician. "I'm just a guy who wants good government and good things for the state."
Kent has a meat and potatoes platform of improving education and bringing more jobs to Kansas. A platform, he thinks, that runs contrary to the Kansas Republicans' obsessive compulsion for divisive social issues (i.e., Guns, God, Gays and Darwin).
"They just seem to be fairly intolerant of anything that doesn't meet their goals," he says. "You can't legislate morality. You're never gonna solve anything and so far as I'm concerned you waste a lot of time."
Haider-Markel thinks that this rift in the Republican Party on the hot-button topics is driving many moderates into the arms of the Democrats.
"A lot of it is the social issues," he says. "They feel that the conservatives aren't very tolerant of their view-points. Partly because the moderates don't even want to really deal with these social issues. They're not motivated to be public servants because of these issues, whereas many of the conservatives are."
Perhaps the primary reason for Kent's party switch -- and maybe the eight others: Mark Parkinson, Paul Morrison, Steve Lukert, Cindy Neighbor, Duane Mathes, current Abilene city commissioner Judy Leyerzapf, Walt Chappell, and Brenton Weeks -- is some good old-fashioned, Free State populism.
"We used to elect statesmen. We don't elect statesmen anymore. Not that I'm going to count myself as a statesman. But, anymore, it seems like we've got to elect 'Democrats' or 'Republicans'. And that's not the way it should be. That's part of the reason for the party switch, too. To get some more people involved and so you can get a choice," Kent says.
From the deepest, reddest heart of Republican Kansas, this neo-Democrat adds, "We forget that the government is us."
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