If you need more AI slop, the Kansas Republican Party has you covered | Opinion
It’s comforting to know that if America ever runs out of AI slop, the Kansas Republican Party stands ready to provide.
They certainly stepped up this week, with a Facebook post illustrated by an artificial intelligence-generated image of the Kansas Reflector, Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle depicted, respectively, as a witch, a zombie and a vampire.
The avatars for the three news organizations are shown scaring a wagonload of blue-haired women (representing all non-right-wing Kansans) on what the GOP calls a “haunted hayride.”
Halloween is only four months away. It’s never too early to start decorating, I guess.
But the only really scary thing here is the specter of Republican abuse of power that is represented by the ill-intentioned and poorly written Senate Bill 105, passed into law last year.
The GOP is wildly incensed at recent news reports pointing out that under S.B. 105, if GOP political operators time things right, Sen. Roger Marshall could resign to take a job in the Trump Administration, and a handpicked handful of Republican state legislators could cancel the upcoming November election and put one of their own in the seat until the next election in 2028.
Such a move would stave off the Republican Party’s worst nightmare, that one of Kansas’ two Senate seats (and potentially control of the Senate) could flip from red to blue before President Donald Trump is term-limited out in early 2029.
People who read the Republican post on Facebook assumed the text with the haunted hayride image was also AI. But the party later clarified: “While the image is AI generated, the text is all original and we’re very proud of both.”
That’s not the flex they think it is. Frankly, it was less embarrassing when everybody thought the whole thing was AI.
I’ve read the text carefully. Amid its many insults to the press and Kansas voters, the following is everything the Republican Party had to say about why the scenario the news outlets reported couldn’t happen: ____________.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s move on to some of the other villainy in S.B. 105, which, in keeping with the Halloween theme, we could call the nightmare on Jackson Street, Topeka.
The Kansas Republican Legislature (let’s face it, Democrats are irrelevant) passed S.B. 105 solely to ensure that when vacancies occur for U.S. senator, state treasurer or insurance commissioner, the House and Senate leadership will be able to plant one of their cronies in the office.
Don’t take my word for it. The text accompanying the hayride AI image is an outright confession:
“The truth is that the 2025 law was a response to Governor Laura Kelly’s blatant partisan move to replace Republican State Treasurer Jake LaTurner with Democrat Lynn Rogers, her lieutenant governor, after LaTurner resigned to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Democrat Kathleen Sebelius pulled the same partisan stunt when she appointed Democrat Dennis McKinney to replace Republican Lynn Jenkins.”
That’s hilarious. Elected Democratic governors appointed Democrats to fill vacancies? The horror!
Senate bill: no unaffiliated appointees allowed
Also, the GOP didn’t mention that time when Republican Gov. Sam Brownback replaced Democrat Thomas Wright on the Kansas Corporation Commission with Shari Feist Albrecht, who was unaffiliated. He would have appointed a Republican, but couldn’t because state law mandates no more than two of the three commissioners can be from the same political party.
Notably, S.B. 105 essentially guarantees no unaffiliated Kansan (28% of the state’s voters) will ever be appointed to the offices it covers.
It requires not only that appointees belong to the same party as the departing official, but they have to have been a member for at least six years. The only exception to the “no unaffiliateds” rule would be if the departing office holder is unaffiliated. They never are.
Even if it did happen, the unaffiliated official could, and would, be replaced by a Republican.
The panel empowered with narrowing the choices of appointees consists of 12 lawmakers — 10 Republican and two Democratic. Their job is to vet the candidates for right-wing reliability and send along a list of names for the governor to appoint.
S.B. 105 was the brainchild of state Sen. Mike Thompson, who admitted that the reason for it would be to keep Gov. Kelly from appointing a non-Republican senator for a few months if Marshall took a job with the administration.
The Shawnee Republican also told Star reporter Matthew Kelly that if he had his way, there wouldn’t even be elections for U.S. senators.
He called the 17th Amendment, which took the power to elect senators away from state legislatures and gave it to the people, “a big mistake.”
And he’s not alone.
Rep. Keith Self, a Texas Republican, on Thursday introduced a joint resolution to repeal the 17th Amendment. It already has nine co-sponsors, all Republicans, including Eric Burlison of Missouri.
But I probably shouldn’t have told you that. Someone might accuse me of trying to scare the blue-haired ladies.
