stephan: get out that magnifying glass
It’s one thing when a conservative former Attorney General quits Phill Kline’s campaign. It’s another when he quits the campaign over what he sees as questionable fundraising tactics by Kline. It’s quite another when he suggests publicly that those tactics should be investigated by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission:
Stephan requested that the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission look into Kline’s fund-raising at churches, and $41,552 in unitemized contributions he reported on his campaign finance statement filed this week.
“It is very difficult to pin anything down, and that’s why I have asked for this investigation,†Stephan said in an interview with the Journal-World.
I’ve always thought that Phill Kline valued one thing above all else: winning elections. There’s a saying in politics: “You can’t govern if you don’t win.” That’s true. It’s also idiotic. The standard is whether one should be allowed to govern in the first place, and as far I’m concerned, my answer to Phill Kline is “No.”
UPDATE: I think that Phil Brownlee and the rest of the Eagle editors responsible for something they’re calling a “blog” at WE Blog are basically press relations for the Kansas Democratic Party, but if this is true — and I haven’t seen the ad — it shows Kline is done. And dumb, because there was a statewide story recently about how the allegations were quietly dropped with no settlement made.
Think about this, though: This alleged incident was 15 years ago, when the words “sexual harassment” were on absolutely everybody’s lips in the age of Anita Hill and other high-profile cases. It involved a (then-)Republican elected official in a town where the Kansas City Star dominates local political coverage. Don’t you think that if there were a “there” there, it would have been run into the ground, with repercussions ranging well into now?
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