Friday, February 6, 2009

Run, Sebelius! Run!

This is just patently obvious: Kathleen Sebelius should not be the next HHS Secretary; she should be the next Senator from Kansas. With the stimulus debate it's become abundantly clear that the main bottleneck to Getting Things Done is the Know-Nothing economic attitude of large numbers of Republican elected officials. The only way one can hope to change that is by delivering repeated electoral defeats to the GOP. Obviously losing 14 Senate seats and 50 House in two years has not been enough, so Democrats will need all hands on deck for a third offensive campaign in 2010.

There are probably a dozen or more people qualified to be the next HHS Secretary. There isn't even one other person who can be the next Democratic Senator from Kansas. I don't care if she wants to be the chair of the Appropriations committe, Bob Menendez shoudl give it to her.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I couldn't possibly agree more. It'll hurt to see Brownback become governor, but that's pretty much going to happen anyway so we might as well get the best outcome we can.

Nick Beaudrot said...

Well she's term-limited anyway, right?

Anonymous said...

Yeah, exactly. And Parkinson has already said he won't run - and if he did it would be a really close race. He was helpful to Sebelius's image as an aisle-crosser, but his own reputation is somewhat damaged from switching parties.

And that's pretty much it. It's funny, 'cause Kansas is not nearly so solidly conservative as it appears. I've only anecdotal evidence for this, but I suspect there's a not insignificant number of people, centered in Johnson County but sprinkled around the rest of the state, who are GOP because it allows them to vote against the crazies in primaries. If the Democrats could just reach some tipping point, there could be mass defections.

Probably just wishful thinking.

Neil Sinhababu said...

The rumors I heard were that she wanted to go run the University of Kansas. Is that true? I mean, I've been down with the Rock Chalk thing since I was a kid in Lawrence, but I hope Menendez can talk her out of it.

Anonymous said...

That does seem silly. I really haven't heard too much about that.

Sebelius, it seems, actually is pretty good at keeping her plans to herself.

Jason said...

I'll echo the headline of your post: Run, Kathleen, Run!

As to the rumors regarding her desire to be Chancellor of the University of Kansas- that found itself into the press the first time as a quote by the Executive Director of the Kansas Republican Party- so take it with a HUGE grain of salt.

As a Kansan, I hope to God Sebelius runs- she would be an amazing Senator.

http://kansasjackass.blogspot.com