Pat Roberts’ foe begins to close the gap in Kansas

Less than a week before primary day, Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is still ahead, but he has a real race on his hands against a tea party challenger the establishment had largely written off months ago. The three-term incumbent is losing ground in polls, as he spends big on the airwaves to fight off the image of a Washington insider who lives in suburban Virginia and stays with campaign donors during his infrequent visits back home. Meanwhile, Milton Wolf, a radiologist who had never run for office, is inching closer, despite being wrapped up in a scandal after posting X-rays of deceased patients on Facebook.

The latest automated poll conducted by SurveyUSA has Roberts up by 20 points — narrower than his 33-point edge a month ago. Although Roberts still holds a solid lead, in the aftermath of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s shocking primary defeat, even a 20-point gap isn’t enough to comfort establishment Republicans when the trend line is moving in Wolf’s favor.

“It’s definitely closer than we expected,” said one GOP operative close to the race on Roberts’ side. Except for Wolf’s scandal, the conditions are favorable for an upset: Tea party groups who fell short in the Mississippi Senate race are turning their attention toward Kansas; Roberts, who has worked in Washington for 47 years (including time as a congressional staffer), is facing reelection in a cycle in which the anti-Washington sentiment is much stronger; and although Roberts took his challenger seriously, the establishment didn’t consider Wolf a major threat and didn’t come out on Roberts’ behalf as it did for Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran.

I don't know what's happening in Kansas, but I can tell you what many pundits missed in the Cantor/Bratt primary. Cantor had plenty of money, but Bratt was not too vulnerable as a political newcomer. In other words, Bratt hadn't been around enough to become dirty. Cantor, on the other hand, had been around and he had a few scars that he wanted to hide. He was also overly fond of life in DC and tended to ignore the folks that he needed to send him there.

What it came down to, was that Cantor had to go negative on Bratt, and he used a huge amount of money to paint Bratt as a lib college professor who worked with Dems on a commission to raise VA income taxes.

The problem was that there were many outlets that called foul on this tactic, mainly because it wasn't true. The miscalculation that Cantors team made was that every time one of these dishonest ads were run, it would piss off the folks that were paying attention and make it more likely that they would go to the polls and express their displeasure.

In a general election there would be enough low information voters to cover this fault as most would vote for Cantor because they voted for him last time. But in a primary, the low info voters don't show, so it mostly the folks that care that vote and that's why Cantors polls were so lopsided verses the reality when they counted the votes in the box.

I don't know if the Roberts race has anything in common with the Cantor/Bratt race, but if it doesn't, I wouldn't expect the same result.

“I don’t know if the Roberts race has anything in common with the Cantor/Bratt race, but if it doesn’t, I wouldn’t expect the same result.”

The race in Kansas has some similarities to the Cantor/Bratt race. The latest thing to happen of any import is that Roberts is running ads stating that Wolfe is now under investigation for by the state medical review board (or whatever they call it there) because he posted patient x-rays online and made comments on them several years ago. Not a bright move.

posting X-rays of deceased patients on Facebook.......

I am more convinced everyday that Facebook has proved to actually be a good thing. The “good thing” about is its being an irresistible magnet for the stupid, who post anything imaginable in some effort to seem reverent, for all the world to see their stupid immaturity.

Pat Roberts needs a firing, but who in their right mind would think “posting X-rays of deceased patients on Facebook” was a smart thing in showing a viable alternative to Pat Roberts? Kansas may indeed be better off not picking Dr. Wolf.

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