We’re really going to be sad on Election Day. Honestly. Nobody loves campaigns more than us; we’re genuinely excited when campaign commercials come on during the news. And when that’s all over, there’s a sort of metaphysical hole in our collective heart; it’s sort of like the last day of baseball season. But take heart, because things seem to be heating up in this last month. Here are the current highlights of the KC-area political scene.
The big happening, of course, is the bailout. You’ll be glad to know that we saw a nice split between our states on this vote: the two Missouri senators voted yes, and the two Kansas senators voted no. Why the negativity from the Sunflower State? Here’s Pat Roberts:
“Kansans who have worked hard and lived within their means should not have their hard-earned dollars used to bail out financial firms that made risky financial decisions.”
Ah. Now, Pat does know that the damage will not be confined to financial firms, right? And that a huge number of Americans happen to do business with those firms? Including, we presume, some Kansans?
Meanwhile, in your weekly skullduggery update, there’s this:
Not exactly Watergate, but a Republican campaign office in the Kansas City area was broken into last night.
Party spokeswoman Tina Hervey sent word out this morning that someone threw a rock through the window of the “victory office phone bank,” apparently in Independence, and stole a laptop.
Nooooo! Damn you, incorrigible liberal thieves! We have no doubt that proceeds from the sale of that laptop were immediately used to help a gay illegal immigrant get an abortion! You’re on notice, liberals: keep your godless thievery out of our upstanding parties’ offices.
Oh, and everyone’s favorite state tray-zher, Lynn Jenkins, participated in a little debate last night against incumbent Nancy Boyda. Lynn was, um, not to be trifled with:
Jenkins went on the attack at several points, criticizing Boyda for even being in Kansas while complex negotiations on the bailout continue in Washington. She noted that the Senate stayed to work on the bill, though the House took two days off.
“I would have hoped that the House members would have been in Washington as well,” she said, later calling the time Boyda spent in her district over the summer “a five week vacation.”
So… she shouldn’t be at the debate at all? Oh. To be fair, though, there is this fawning piece in the Star today about Lynn. And imagine our surprise when we found a halfway decent quote:
Jenkins says she’s the type of Republican her parents were — less concerned with ideology than honesty, more focused on budgets and business than on Bibles or guns.
This is actually a pretty encouraging thought. So we’ll say this: while Lynn’s obsession with tax-cutting and CPA-ing and her apparent lack of understanding about how the government works worry us, we actually give her some credit for not being another religious idealogue. Good for you, Lynn.
