By Rich
Lowry
Monday,
September 26, 2022
Sometimes all
you need to know about how an issue is playing is how a candidate reacts.
Kansas
governor Laura Kelly, a Democrat, released an ad last week saying, “You have
seen my opponent’s attacks. So let me just say it: Of course men should not
play girls sports. Okay, we all agree there.”
The ad
is an attempt at defensive culture-war politics — and also brazenly dishonest
and cynical.
Democrats
would be better off if they were willing to associate themselves with broadly
popular, commonsensical views on a host of culturally charged issues. Of
course, we don’t support teaching CRT in public schools. Of course, we think
illegal immigrants at the border should be excluded and promptly sent home. Of
course, we support some restrictions on abortion.
This
would this take the edge off their radicalism, give Republicans less to shoot
at, and increase Democratic appeal to fence-sitting moderates. As Kelly
demonstrates, some Democrats feel compelled to say such things, but these kinds
of assurances generally aren’t forthcoming from the national Democratic Party.
It would
be even better, of course, if Democrats who say the right things actually mean
them. Instead — again, as Kelly shows — they are often engaged in transparent
efforts to reduce their political vulnerability, while blocking policies
informed by the sentiments they are trying to co-opt.
For all
that Kelly wants to sound like a reasonable moderate on trans sports, she
vetoed bills in both 2021 and 2022 to keep males from competing in girls’ sports.
She was clearly the difference-maker here — the bills passed the Kansas
legislature handily, and the Senate voted earlier this year to override her veto 28–10 (the
House failed to
override by
three votes).
It’s not
as though Kelly’s opposition was nuanced. It was exactly what you’d expect to
hear from any Democrat from Manhattan or Berkeley. Her campaign still has
an online
petition against
the bill, calling it “hateful, discriminatory legislation.” It is allegedly “a
direct attack on Kansans across the state — from the student athletes who are
being discriminated against to the communities harmed by potential economic
repercussions.”
Forced
to square her ad with the vetoes and her past rhetoric, she has resorted
to unpersuasive
parsing. Incredibly
enough, she is trying to argue that her ad was only talking about “a male over
the age of 18” trying to compete in sports with younger girls — something that
no one supports (at least not yet).
A
spokesperson for Kelly said, “These decisions should be made by
medical professionals, school officials, families, and local jurisdictions —
not politicians.”
The
problem, though, is that the purveyors of trans-radicalism are so determined —
and have such an ability to cajole and cow any institution or official who is
not a committed opponent of the agenda — that the only reliable vehicle for
pushing back is the political process.
Conservatives
are right to agitate for rules against males distorting and demeaning girls’
sports — and to make Democrats defend the indefensible.
Kelly
came out with her ad under pressure from her Republican opponent Derek Schmidt,
who has been hitting the issue hard. He appeared at a news conference with
Riley Gaines, a University of Kentucky swimmer who lost to Lia Thomas in the
NCAA finals. Gaines was also featured in a spot from the Republican Governors
Association.
With
Kelly, it’s not even a matter of “watch what she does, not what she says.”
Prior to her TV spot, she wasn’t even saying the right thing.
She clearly knows she’s vulnerable, which is why she took the radical measure
of saying out loud something that most people believe.
That she
could bring herself to say this only in the final weeks of a close reelection
race really tells you all you need to know.
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