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Sen. Jerry Moran’s weekly newsletter touts “Kansas Common Sense.” Nov. 5 will test that slogan — the common sense to choose country over party. Kansans have done so repeatedly, electing Democratic governors Laura Kelly, Kathleen Sebelius, and others, as well as Democratic presidents, most recently Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Since then, Kansas has ceded the White House to the GOP, and we are now a flyover campaign state. Taken for granted, our six electoral votes are a foregone GOP conclusion.
Kansas common sense can shock the nation on Nov. 5. It did just that on Aug. 2, 2022, when the state overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to deny Kansas women the right to an abortion. On Nov. 5, Kansans can award six common-sense electoral votes to one candidate: the one who has the maturity, stability, and selflessness of character to be president; the one who has the psyche, temperament, and judgment for responsible decisions; and the one who has the ethics and moral fortitude to be the leader of the United States and the free world.
Kansans will be trusting this person with their lives and livelihoods: the nuclear codes, global democracy, the respect of world leaders, crisis decisions in the Situation Room, and the economic and social well-being of all Americans. Above all, Kansans will be appointing the guardian and defender of the U.S. Constitution to ensure our rights to life, liberty, and the rule of law.
By any measure — by all these measures — the Republican candidate is not that person. Kansas common sense would not choose a commander in chief who would send American men and women into war and call them “suckers and losers.” Kansas common sense would not opt for a world leader who grovels in front of international despots while they commit crimes against humanity: Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, China’s Xi Jinping. Envying their power, the Republican candidate has publicly vowed to rule as they do: “dictator on day one.” On day two, he’ll curtsy to Putin and hand him Ukraine. Time was that the party of Ronald Reagan — “tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” — led the free world against Russian tyranny.
Kansas common sense would not choose a Republican candidate who so disrespects and dishonors Americans of every creed and color that he sits down to Thanksgiving dinner with avowed nazis, antisemites, fascists, and racists. He praised a self-proclaimed “black NAZI!” and champion of slavery, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”
Most critically, Kansas common sense would reject a Republican candidate who would take an oath on the Constitution and then, as he has vowed, promptly tear it up and institute his dictatorial rule. He’s had practice. He planned and incited an insurrection to seize the government on Jan. 6, 2021. Plan B was the fake elector scheme. Plan C was asking Georgia to change 11,780 votes. Fortunately, he failed. Now he has more than a “concept of a plan.” He has Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for scrubbing democracy, people’s rights, our social safety net, and the rule of law from America. How? Critics in the media jailed. Political opponents prosecuted. Government cleansed of justice and accountability. Millions placed in detention camps. Social Security, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act slashed or killed. Middle-class taxes raised. Tax breaks for billionaires.
Kansas common sense would have had Sen. Moran stand up and declare the Republican candidate unfit for Kansans to elect as president. He hasn’t, choosing silence or private disapproval. To be silent, history teaches, is to be complicit.
More than 700 national security officials, 400 economists, and 200 conservative GOP leaders refuse to be complicit. Prominent among them are former Kansas Sen. Nancy Kassebaum; former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Mike Pence; current senators Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney, and Todd Young; and former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. They’ve issued a stern warning to America: The Republican candidate is a clear and present danger to the country. They cite his hate rhetoric, his pitting neighbor against neighbor, his disastrous policies, his cognitive dysfunctions, his pathological lying, and his hunger for autocratic power.
Even J.D. Vance, the Republican candidate’s running mate, once called him “America’s Hitler” and “a moral disaster.” That was in 2016. Eight years later, the scent of power has completed Vance’s corruption.
Kansans remember and revere the common sense of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Sen. Bob Dole. They spoke the plain, hard truth. Here it is: The Republican candidate for president — and his running mate, a heartbeat away — are unworthy of and unfit for that office. Time for Kansas common sense on Nov. 5.
— Leonard Krishtalka is emeritus director and emeritus professor at the University of Kansas, and a novelist.
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