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In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy assessed the odd things she was experiencing and said to her little dog, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Lately, Sen. Pat Roberts has gained a new understanding of what Dorothy meant.
The Kansas Republican has been in the Senate for 18 years and was in the House for 16 years before that.
So he’s been away for a long time, and now that he’s running for another six-year senate term, Roberts has learned that the Kansas he thought he was from — a state of relatively moderate, Eisenhower-style Republicans — has become the Political Land of Right-Wing Oz.
A rabidly extremist, Koch-headed, tea party Republicanism has taken hold of the GOP’s primary process and blown out the moderates.
The upshot for Roberts is that Republican voters are now hard-right, howl-at-the-moon lunatics who demand ideological purity over everything else.
And they’ve put up one of their own to run against him in the August primary.
But, by golly, the senator is fighting back. Unfortunately, he’s not doing it by standing up for his principles and refusing to be intimidated by crazies. Instead, Roberts has put on his own crazy pants, altered his beliefs, and is dancing like a fool with the ideologues.
He recently opposed the Farm Bill he helped write, he joined the certifiably goofy Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the silly political stunt that shut down the U.S. government last October, and he even became a member of the tinfoil hat club by voting against a United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities.
Come on Pat, you’ve been in Congress for 34 years, you’re 77 years old, and you’re getting a gold-plated pension for the rest of your life. Is six more years in the Senate really worth selling out people with disabilities — along with your own integrity?
Holding Trump accountable for his illegal war on Iran
The devastating American and Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Iranians, and the death toll continues to rise.
As independent media, what we do next matters a lot. It’s up to us to report the truth, demand accountability, and reckon with the consequences of U.S. militarism at this cataclysmic historical moment.
Trump may be an authoritarian, but he is not entirely invulnerable, nor are the elected officials who have given him pass after pass. We cannot let him believe for a second longer that he can get away with something this wildly illegal or recklessly dangerous without accountability.
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