Tag: bob dole
Kansas Landslide Showed Most Americans Still Value Liberty -- And Privacy

Kansas Landslide Showed Most Americans Still Value Liberty -- And Privacy

That Kansas voted to protect abortion rights guaranteed in its state constitution didn’t surprise me, although I certainly never expected a landslide. The original “Jayhawks,” after all, waged a guerilla war to prevent Missourians from bringing slavery into the Kansas territory, a violent dress rehearsal for the Civil War. A good deal of the state’s well-known conservatism is grounded in stiff-necked independence.

In the popular imagination, Kansas has always signified heartland values and rustic virtue. Superman grew up on a farm there, disguised as mild-mannered Clark Kent. So did Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz, a spunky young woman with an adventurous spirit. But cartoonish fantasies have little to do with the real world. My favorite Kansas politician was always Sen. Bob Dole, war hero, Senate majority leader, 1996 GOP presidential nominee, and unmistakably his own man.

Pondering a photo of the then-three living ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Richard Nixon, Dole quipped “There they are: see no evil, speak no evil…and evil.”

Regardless of party, how can you not appreciate a politician like that? After the 2020 presidential election, Dole accepted Joe Biden’s victory and allowed as how he was “all Trumped-out.”

So naturally, Trump skipped his 2021 funeral. All class, that guy.

Although nominally anti-abortion during most of his career, Dole was also a realist who was leery of single-issue zealots and political purity tests. Suffice it to say they aren’t making Republicans like him anymore.

All of that is a roundabout way of saying the Kansas result shouldn’t have astonished anybody. After all, the state currently has a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly. Another Democrat, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, was elected there in 2002 and reelected in 2006. Indeed, as Stuart Rothenberg points out in Roll Call, Democrats have won four of the last eight gubernatorial contests in the state and six of the last 11.”

It follows that this blue state/red state business based strictly on presidential elections tells you relatively little about a place and its retail politics. More broadly, Justice Samuel Alito and a handful of religious zealots on the Supreme Court can argue that there’s no right to privacy in the Constitution, but they will never persuade a majority of Americans to believe it.

Specifically, how is it even the government’s affair to know who’s pregnant and who’s not? How is it yours? How is it anybody’s except the woman herself? Truly, it’s hard to imagine a more fundamental freedom than the decision whether or not to give birth.

Almost needless to say, women voters in Kansas appear to have felt this more keenly than men. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal some 33,000 new voters registered in Kansas in the weeks immediately following the court’s decision overturning Roe vs. Wade, some 70 percent of them women. That’s a lot in a state with just under two million registered voters, enough to push the state’s abortion referendum into landslide territory: 59 to 41 percent.

What the Kansas vote mainly signified to me was bedrock Americanism: essentially, “You’re not the boss of me, and it’s none of your damn business.”

“For decades,” writes the New Yorker’s John Cassidy, “the Republican Party has largely owned and exploited the language of individual liberty and freedom, even as many of its policies have favored the rich and powerful— from gunmakers to Big Pharma and Wall Street—over individual middle-class Americans.”

It's time to call their bluff. Everywhere you look these days, politicians calling themselves “conservative” are banning books, pushing teachers around, threatening school boards and businesses, suppressing voting rights, attacking the freedom to love and marry, elevating gun rights over basic human rights, and doing their best to turn American women and girls into brood mares, knocked up and locked up.

What they are is authoritarian. In a word, bullies.

Writing on Twitter, Sen. Chris Murphy, of Connecticut has some advice for fellow Democrats up for election this fall. (He’s not on the 2022 ballot.) “Run on personal freedom,” he urges. “Run on keeping the government out of your private life. Run on getting your rights back. This is where the energy is. This is where the 2022 election will be won.”

Polls show that the majority of likely voters are preoccupied with economic issues, inflation in particular. But the Kansas referendum resulted from right-wing activists seeking to impose a total ban on legal abortion: an intrusive effort to extend government control into citizens’ most intimate life decisions.

And voters there rejected it about as decisively as it’s possible to do. It appears that Americans—and for what it’s worth, Kansans are overwhelmingly white and Christian—have no wish to live in a judicially-imposed theocracy and will turn out in droves to prevent it. Overall voting totals were extremely high for a primary contest, reflecting strong motivation.

Perhaps Chris Murphy’s optimism is mistaken. But it’s definitely the right fight to have.

No Former GOP Presidential Nominees Have Endorsed Trump

No Former GOP Presidential Nominees Have Endorsed Trump

The Republican Party, which is on track to nominate a candidate that defies party orthodoxy on everything from trade to nuclear nonproliferation, is going through a generational change.

And nothing illustrates Trump’s departures from the rest of his adopted party like the near total silence from former Republican presidential nominees on Trump’s nativist campaign.

Mitt Romney, the party’s nominee in 2012, gave a speech at the beginning of March rebutting Trump’s message, calling him a “phony,” “fraud,” “con man,” and a “fake.” No ringing endorsement. Romney’s stayed silent since both Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the nominating battle earlier this week.

On Wednesday, Romney’s political protégé (and Trump endorsee) Scott Brown said of Romney, “I’ve heard from many sources that he has said, indirectly or directly to them … if it’s between Hillary and Trump, Trump wins.” But Romney hasn’t commented on Brown’s comments — take them with a huge grain of salt.

In recordings obtained by Politico of a fundraiser for his re-election campaign, John McCain, who lost against Barack Obama in 2008, said, “Have no doubt that if it is Donald Trump at the top of the ticket here in Arizona, with over 30 percent of the vote being Hispanic votes, I have no doubt that this may be the last race of my life.”

McCain goes on to describe the “element of nativism” in Donald Trump’s pitch to “angry” voters: “The first wedge that Donald trump had that gave him notoriety was ‘Build a wall, rapists, murderers, et cetera,'” McCain says.

The personal aide of George W. Bush, Republican nominee in 2000 and 2004, told The Texas Tribune that the former president “does not plan to participate in or comment on the presidential campaign.”

A spokesman for his father, George H. W. Bush, said the 91-year-old former president “is retired from politics,” though Bush did endorse John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

Bob Dole, who lost to Bill Clinton in 1992, has come about as close to endorsing Trump as any living former GOP nominee. In January, he said nominating Ted Cruz would be “cataclysmic” for Republicans (“nobody likes him”), and that Donald Trump would “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”

But this was before the first Republican voters made their feelings known in Iowa — before Trump essentially hijacked Dole’s party. It’s possible Bob Dole will endorse Trump as the Republican nominee, based on his statements in January. But the 92-year-old he hasn’t commented on the election since then.

Photo: U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush (R) greet former first lady Nancy Reagan at Blair House in Washington in this June 10, 2004 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

Republican Rubio Scores More Endorsements For President

Republican Rubio Scores More Endorsements For President

By Megan Cassella

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio racked up a number of endorsements from party leaders on Monday, giving weight to his message that he can become the establishment favorite behind whom Republicans can unite.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole said they would back the U.S. senator from Florida for the party’s nomination to run for president in the Nov. 8 election.

Three Republican leaders from Nevada – U.S. Senator Dean Heller and U.S. Representatives Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei – also announced their support for Rubio leading up the state’s caucuses on Tuesday.

“I’m delighted to support @marcorubio because he is best choice to keep our country safe,” Hutchinson posted on Twitter. “Will you join me and help Marco win Arkansas?”

The Arkansas primary comes after Nevada in the state-by-state nominating contest on March 1. Twelve other states and American Samoa will also be holding primaries or caucuses on that date, known as Super Tuesday.

The endorsements came as Rubio tries to seize on the exit of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Saturday to win the support of more mainstream members of their party. Bush dropped out after a poor showing in South Carolina’s Republican primary.

Hatch, who said he had initially supported Bush because he had more experience, called Rubio the “more serious candidate” compared with front-runner Donald Trump.

“I feel he has the background to be able to really help turn this mess around,” Hatch told reporters.

Dole, a former U.S. senator from Kansas who lost to then-President Bill Clinton in 1996, said he switched his support to Rubio after Bush left the campaign trail because he was young, hard-working and a “better candidate” than rival Ohio Governor John Kasich.

“He wants to grow the party as opposed to (U.S. Senator Ted) Cruz,” Dole said in an interview on ABC’s Political Powerhouse podcast, referring to another Republican candidate. “I don’t know what he wants to grow.”

(Reporting by Megan Cassella; Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Eric Walsh and Jonathan Oatis)

Photo: U.S. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks during a campaign event in Elko, Nevada February 22, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Keane

Bob Dole, Still Alive And A Lot Wiser Than His Fellow Republicans

Bob Dole, Still Alive And A Lot Wiser Than His Fellow Republicans

Twitter can be so comical and so heartless, all at once.

When Bob Dole began trending this week, the wisecracks began to roll.

“Oh no … did he die? Worse — he endorsed Jeb!”

“Bob Dole endorses Viagra AND Jeb Bush! Just saying!”

“When I saw Bob Dole trending, I was shocked to find out it wasn’t because he died, but rather because Jeb’s campaign has.”

Yes, the former U.S. senator, representative, vice presidential and presidential candidate is quite with us at 92. And, God willing, Dole will be around at this time next year possibly to see his wishes for Jeb Bush reach fruition.

“I think he’s the most qualified,” Dole said, explaining why he endorsed Bush for the GOP nomination. “We need somebody with experience.”

A good portion of the GOP candidates either weren’t born or were barely walking when Dole first entered Congress in 1960. Increasingly frail, Dole is hardly a wheeler dealer in the Republican Party anymore.

Yet despite his age, Dole just might be more in touch with his party’s broader base, with American voters overall, than the candidates 30 or 40 years younger. Tweet that, #whoseanoldfartnow.

Dole has a point. And it’s one we better hope others come around to. Repetition eventually does work. And it can’t be repeated often enough that a Trump presidency would bankrupt the country and throw Constitutional protections into the gutter.

It won’t come to that. The tenor and tone of the GOP campaigns is beginning to turn ever so slightly toward substance, and the candidates’ positions and grasp of deeper geopolitical and economic conditions are coming under more scrutiny.

The Milwaukee debate is an example. Just about all the candidates got zinged somehow, either by context or outright error, once the fact-checking was done. Real conversations about taxes, world leaders, banking regulations and trade agreements will do that to the unprepared, unserious candidates.

It was more proof that the glittery candidates can only stand behind their drummed-up celebrity for so long. The gilding is starting to fade. Trump, at the forefront of the charlatans, is repeatedly being shown up for great bluster but complete incompetence.

He’s perhaps best known for his plan to round up immigrant families and send them back across the border, like the horribly named Operation Wetback of the 1950s. Lately, he’s made waves also for insisting that if the U.S. is to become more competitive globally, wages need to be lowered.

Ben Carson is much like Trump but quieter, also running on an interesting back story but not much more. His penchant for stretching the truth about that background — which isn’t even necessary given his career as a neurosurgeon — continues to trip him up.

In contrast, Bush’s biggest problems have been a burdensome family lineage that he can’t do anything about, and not being a shiny enough penny in the shadow of the gaudier candidates.

When he tried to pump up the energy, he got into a juvenile tiff with Sen. Marco Rubio. Bush’s petty remarks were patently inauthentic, as if coached into him by an image consultant hired to give him more edge and bite.

Bush is not a pit bull. He’s more like Dole: old-school in reason and tone, given more to common sense, not flamboyant rhetoric.

These are qualities little valued in his party anymore. The most conspicuous homage that remains to Dole’s legacy, in fact, is on the campus of the University of Kansas. The Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics promotes bipartisanship and public service, exactly what the country needs.

Dole realizes that anyone who has held political office is not the enemy. Politicians who can’t compromise, who conceive their duty as unswerving ideological purity, are responsible for the congressional stalemates that have held up the federal budget and failed to pass needed reforms on a host of issues.

Republicans are falling for candidates that blare their love of Christmas, their humble origins, their disdain for immigrants who don’t speak English and their supposed defiance of Wall Street. Primary voters need to wake up. If they do, a more reasonable candidate like Bush might still have a chance at the nomination.

Dole noted that he likes just about all of the GOP candidates. Then, he whispered, “except Cruz,” as an aside, but didn’t elaborate.

It’s classic Bob Dole, coyly polite but telling it like it is.

(Mary Sanchez is an opinion-page columnist for The Kansas City Star. Readers may write to her at: Kansas City Star, 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108-1413, or via e-mail at msanchez@kcstar.com.) (c) 2015, THE KANSAS CITY STAR. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC

Photo by Civil Rights via Flickr