As Republican primary candidates compete to see who can run the farthest right of the moderate values of most Kansans, it might just be time to take a pause and examine what a far-right blueprint would be like—not just for Kansas but for our nation. Voting to follow the agenda of the Tea Party would mean ending programs like social security and Medicaid of which House Tea Party Caucus founder Michele Bachmann has said: "So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system . . . but basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off.”
This might not be a position that candidates like Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt truly support, but one is left to wonder why, then, have Moran and Tiahrt joined the Tea Party Caucus in the House? Was this simply a political calculation, or do the congressmen agree with other Tea Party initiatives, following the lead of Tea Party darlings Rand Paul and Sharron Angle who hold that we should abolish the Department of Education (putting the banking industry in charge of student loans and ending federal aid to public schools entirely) and close the Department of Energy, ending not only federal investment in clean energy but also its oversight of nuclear materials?
Or, perhaps, the larger question is: “Which is worse? To take views that are not entirely in agreement with your own but are politically expedient, or to actually have such extreme views in the first place?”
