Thursday a group 50 former Republican legislators from across Kansas — including Iola’s Denise Apt, who had a stellar career in the Kansas House — lambasted Gov. Sam Brownback for endorsing opponents of sitting Republican legislators and sending state officials to campaign against them.

Rochelle Chronister of Neodesha, a former state chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and Assistant Majority Leader in the House, spoke for the group, who call themselves “traditional Republicans.”

“It’s astonishing to see a governor who is more interested in politics than policy, more interested in elections than governing.  Gov. Brownback may want a rubber stamp majority in the Legislature, but I think Kansans will have something to say about that on election day. Kansans want their elected officials to do what’s best for their communities, their schools, the elderly and their children,” she said.

Chronister went on to remark that Gov. Brownback is on track to take a $500 million surplus and turn it into a $2.7 billion deficit — the largest in history — by the end of his first term.

“The Administration can try to change the faces in the Legislature, but it won’t change the fact that his policies have been one expensive failure after the next,” Chronister charged, and went on to say that Kansans should begin to focus on the 2014 election and seek new leadership that is “thoughtful, responsible and responsive to the concerns of everyday Kansans.”

EXACTLY 100 YEARS ago, Teddy Roosevelt created the Bull Moose Party and left the Republican Party, which had refused to nominate him for the presidency. Kansas Republicans were split between the new party and the old — and one must go back to that time to find the party as divided as it is today on the purpose of government. 

Chronister and the distinguished former lawmakers who have joined her crusade against the destructive policies of the far right ideologues led by Gov. Brownback, deserve the full attention of all Kansans who care about the future of their state and its people.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

Former Gov. Bill Graves will come back home to Kansas next week to campaign for moderate Republicans who are being opposed by  ultra-conservative Gov. Sam Brownback and the candidates he is backing. 

Graves, who served Kansas as its chief executive from 1995 to 2003, now lives in Virginia but maintains a keen interest in Kansas government. 

The news story reporting that he will make stops in Johnson County, Wichita and Salina didn’t quote the native Kansas leader on his reasons for joining the campaigns of the moderates that Gov. Brownback wants to replace with radicals he can depend upon to vote as he directs.

One must assume that Graves, who deserves credit for taking the state forward on many fronts during his administrations, believes that Gov. Brownback represents a threat to the public schools and the state’s universities, to the integrity of Kansas courts, to the state’s transportation system and to the ability of state government to serve Kansans well. 

If Graves, who is essentially a modest man who resisted temptations to stay at the apex of Kansas politics, were not deeply concerned at the dire prospects for his beloved state, he would not be enlisting in the campaigns of the few moderate Republicans who remain in office and are now threatened.

Those who share his alarm can only hope that the Kansans who elected and re-elected him will place their confidence in him once again and vote for the legislators he came from Virginia to help. 

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

N.B. The Koch brothers’ mouthpiece, Americans for Prosperity, disparaged Graves as one who doesn’t believe in limited government. Graves and most Kansans believe in limited government. The argument is over the role government should play. In Kansas, government is responsible for education, from K through graduate school, for non-partisan courts, for the nation’s best state highway system and for many other public goods which individual Kansans can’t secure for themselves acting alone. Graves’ Republicans believe Kansans want a government which meets these responsibilities and pursues excellence in the striving. 

They are opposed by those who put cutting taxes first — and for whom nothing comes in second. E.L.

Yesterday, Congressional Republicans voted unanimously to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act which is President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. They didn’t offer — much less approve — replacement health care reform legislation, despite the fact that many of them campaigned in 2010 on a promise to “repeal and replace” Obamacare.

If the Republicans win this crusade, there still will be 50 million or more Americans without health care coverage; health insurance companies will still deny affordable policies to children and adults with pre-existing conditions; those who get really sick will still find their policies cancelled; others will discover that they have exceeded the limit their policies will pay; families with offspring will discover they can no longer keep them on the family policy until they are 26; seniors will be told they must pay more for prescription drugs — in short, all of the holes in America’s health care system will spring wide open again.

But yesterday’s House vote was purely political. It was the 31st measure to repeal or defund Obamacare that House Republicans have passed. The Senate will ignore this one as it has the past 30. 

Republican strategists believe that killing health care reform will put them in a stronger position in November’s election. If the current atmosphere prevails they may be correct. The health care bill is unpopular, even though public support for many of its particular provisions — see above — remains dominant. The vote to repeal, despite the fact that it does nothing at all to reduce health care costs or improve health care coverage or achieve its goal, may therefore win votes.

Maybe enough votes to elect Mitt Romney, give Republicans control of the Senate and bury Obamacare six feet under.

THOSE WHO believe the present health care system in our nation is unsustainable and must be replaced with a single-payer system supported with taxes — as is employed by nearly every other modern nation on the globe — are greatly disappointed with Obamacare, but see it as a first step that should be supported until it can morph into effective reform.

The U.S. spends more than 17 percent of its gross national product on health care; more than one dollar in every six pours into that insatiable maw. That’s about a third more than any other nation spends. Health care outcomes in many other modern nations are as good as or better than those in the U.S. If America could swallow its pride and copy the successful systems of nations such as Canada, England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Belgium, Sweden — the list goes on and on — the reduction in costs to our economy would be enough to balance the federal budget and relieve the pressure on every state budget.

But making the change would be traumatic. The health insurance industry would disappear. Medical drug companies and those who retail those products to the public would take a hit. Many health care providers such as medical specialists would see reductions in income. 

Today’s health care costs are income for those in the many-faceted health care industry. It goes without saying that there has been and will continue to be fierce resistance to bringing down U.S. health care costs to rich world levels.

It is equally obvious to those who can see the big picture that the United States cannot continue to spend such a huge percentage of its annual wealth on health care without being forced to greatly reduce its investments on the other areas of human need. 

The sooner our political leaders screw up the courage to deal with the facts as they are, the less painful the absolutely necessary transition will be.

— Emerson Lynn,jr.