The pro­mo for my radio debut is up. Check it out at 7:00 Cen­tral, 8 East­ern, 5 Pacif­ic, on 90.7 FM in the Lawrence area, or stream­ing (or at low­er bitrate) from KJHK.

Once it’s over, I wel­come any­one inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion. I’ll try to have a big overview piece up maybe tomor­row or Sun­day, but here’s my basic thesis.

Kris Kobach has worked for, received mon­ey from, and pledged to sup­port the agen­da of groups that pro­mote extreme­ly rad­i­cal right wing poli­cies. These are groups out of the main­stream who are try­ing to shift the Repub­li­can par­ty away from its mod­er­ate ele­ments into a tru­ly odd place. One group pro­motes a racist agen­da and is asso­ci­at­ed with Holo­caust deniers and eugeni­cists, anoth­er pro­motes mili­tias as a way to purge Amer­i­ca of any­thing that does­n’t match their con­cept of Bib­li­cal law.

These groups have stat­ed desires to infil­trate their sup­port­ers into var­i­ous parts of the gov­ern­ment to pro­mote their agen­da. When they have suc­ceed­ed, they have used con­gress­men they sup­port­ed as stalk­ing hors­es, get­ting into meet­ings with senior lead­er­ship in Congress.

Fur­ther­more, they are dri­ven by, if not racism, xeno­pho­bia. They fear that ille­gal immi­gra­tion from Mex­i­co is actu­al­ly the van­guard of the “Recon­quista,” a re-annex­a­tion of lands cap­tured in the Mex­i­can war. They advo­cate mil­i­ta­riz­ing the bor­der to respond to what they see has a mil­i­tary inva­sion by “homo prog­en­i­ti­va,” and wor­ry that the descen­dants of the orig­i­nal set­tlers from the 13 colonies (“homo con­tra­cep­tivus”), and their reli­gion, will be oblit­er­at­ed by this infe­ri­or group.

Kris Kobach has stat­ed his sup­port for mil­i­ta­riz­ing the bor­der, and has also shown him­self to be an extrem­ist on immi­gra­tion, since he is the only lawyer who came for­ward to sue the state of Kansas over a law it shares with 8 oth­er states, grant­i­ng in-state tuition to any­one who has gone through at least three years of high school. Whether he shares all of the bizarre beliefs of these groups, his will­ing­ness to court them, and their enthu­si­asm for his can­di­da­cy, sug­gests that he will at least pro­mote the poli­cies these groups advo­cate, and oppose com­pro­mise on issues from gun con­trol to immi­gra­tion. He is the pret­ty face these groups are putting for­ward to advo­cate extrem­ism, and to shift every debate away from sen­si­ble mod­er­a­tion, toward the mad­ness of right-wing abso­lutism. He thinks every­one is a lib­er­al, and is sup­port­ed by groups which indi­rect­ly advo­cate death squads as a means of deal­ing with liberals. 

Because his views do not reflect those of the Third Dis­trict, and because his­to­ry sug­gests that he would rep­re­sent his sup­port­ers inter­ests over his con­stituents, no one should vote for him. He should lose 75–25, because any­thing less will make these groups think that they should come back and try again. 

Even the Lawrence Jour­nal World’s con­ser­v­a­tive edi­to­r­i­al board could not enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly sup­port Kobach, mere­ly sug­gest­ing that gener­ic repub­li­cans would be bet­ter than gener­ic democ­rats in both local house races. They note in par­tic­u­lar that “some of his asso­ci­a­tions cause some peo­ple to pause in their enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment of his can­di­da­cy.” (If I had to spec­u­late, I’d guess the edi­to­r­i­al board split on their endorse­ment, and wound up only being able to endorse the par­ty, not the candidate.)

Den­nis Moore is a sen­si­ble mod­er­ate (con­ser­v­a­tive for my tastes) who takes the respon­si­bil­i­ty of rep­re­sent­ing his dis­trict in the House of Rep­re­sentatives. He deserves more respect than Kobach has shown, and I — like the cam­pus paper, the John­son Coun­ty Sun, the Kansas City Star, and count­less Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats — enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly endorse the re-elec­tion of Den­nis Moore and the crush­ing defeat of his unwor­thy opponent.