I LIVE IN A NOISY STATE where the wind is wont to blow at gale force from any compass point of the globe. One learns to live with the wind and look for the subtle signs of shifting conditions. Often these signs are missed in the constant roar but they are they there, those tiny pockets of silence. Mute sounds of nothing before the next onslaught of wind from another direction.

Such is the nature of that bluster we in Kansas call politics. I found it highly amusing when one of the national -news-media-conglomerates put out a blurb concerning 'the curious defection of Republicans' within the state. I know said blurb was aired late in the summer of 2006. Paul Morrison (former Republican big-wig) threw his hat in the ring as a Democrat on October 25th, 2005 to challenge incumbent Phill Kline (R) in the attorney General's race. The Kansas GOP's spin was that many lesser candidates would switch party affiliation to win. Some TV and less radio play with some short articles but not much at all in the editorials and coffeeshops.


Another interesting sidenote was when Senator Sam Brownback, a loyal Bush Republican, began a thinly veiled Presidential bid by questioning the President's choice of Supreme Court Justice Nominee, Harriet Myers. Sure, there were a few blurbs on local and national news but the local newspapers and commentary were strangely quiet. Not quite the rallying of the troops that one would of suspected. This quiet caught my attention as I pondered his motives...A)That he had deduced the public growing concern about the Quagmire called Iraq and was trying to distance himself from the President or... B) the good Senator had been far long in Washington D.C. For in a state where quadruped far outnumber bipeds one cannot help but meet/work/coexist with a "Born Again Christian,"And thus understand the almost scary zeal that these people can posses. Harreit Miles is a former Democrat-born-again-Christian-turned- Republican. The upshot was , some moderate Republicans saw Mr. Bush' as capitulation to the Christian right, the Christian right felt betrayed by the nomination(s) and Senator Brownback distanced himself from both the republican Presidential Machine and the moderate Republicans in the state. The fabric of the Republican party was obviously strained.


Then came the U General Assembly when President Chavez of Venuzuala called President Bush 'el Diablo.' There was just a general bi-partisan criticism of the despsot, but not the thundering roar from the trenches of the right that I was in fact expecting. The silence was deafening, like that of a hot spring day in the late afternoon. That eerie stillness that usually precedes our famous tornadic thunderstorms.

Then this lazy mid-term election began to crank. The wind had shifted, come to gale force and now here at the eve of the election true weirdness surrounds me. A sitting President is stumping
in Kansas, where I think that they actually believe that the moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats will, in a surge of 'star idolization', vote Rube- publican. As proud as we are of our state, we all know Kansas is a low priority state in the world of Politics.

Too many Kansans have died. Our educational system is in jeopardy. Our civil liberties are ignored by our own attorney General. Our State school board harkens to the flat earth society. The storm clouds gather for a failed Republican government.