Kansas GOP chair vows to remove ‘Democrat infestation.’ Do normal Republicans agree? | Opinion

Mike Brown, the chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, doesn’t see his Democratic rivals as human.

Don’t take my word for it. Take his.

On Wednesday — when much of America was talking about Donald Trump’s racist attacks on Kamala Harris — Brown sent out an email from the party, asking recipients to donate to Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Democrat policies have destroyed our beloved America — open borders, inflation, chaos, and crime,” he wrote. And if that seems hyperbolic, well, that’s politics I guess.

What he wrote next, though, went beyond the usual hyperbole.

It was frankly scary.

“As the chair of the KSGOP, it is my job to elect Republicans and keep Biden and his leftist pals and operatives out of our great state,” Brown wrote. “Early next year in my second term, I will begin the hard work as KSGOP Chairman of removing the Democrat infestation at the Kansas Governor’s Mansion.”

“Democrat infestation.”

To describe Gov. Laura Kelly — the rightful winner of two straight Kansas gubernatorial elections.

Goodness.

“Infestation” is not the kind of word you use to describe mere political opponents. It’s not even the kind of word you use to describe other people you consider to be actual people.

It’s the kind of word you’d use to describe an outbreak of lice, or cockroaches, or rats.

You know. Something to be exterminated.

Maybe it would be easy to write Brown’s comments — sent out to Republicans across the state — as a one-off, an accidental overstatement, except that he sure seems to be following Trump’s example in using such startling language.

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” Trump told a New Hampshire crowd back in November.

“Vermin.” Not people.

This isn’t the language of democratic politics. It’s the language of violent authoritarianism.

Beating up effigy of Joe Biden in Johnson County

Kansas Republicans have spent years suggesting that Kelly isn’t quite a legitimate governor. She didn’t win a majority of the vote in either of her campaigns — beating the Republican candidates both times with a little help from third-party candidates who divvied up the electorate.

“Her presence in the governor’s office is a tragic collision of timing,” Ty Masterson, now the president of the Kansas Senate, said in 2019.

That’s merely sore loser talk. Brown’s “infestation” talk — like the “vermin” speech — is something a bit more threatening.

Because we’ve seen this before. Some of the worst regimes in human history have justified their crimes against despised minorities and ideological groups by defining them as something other than human.

“When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human,” Columbia University’s Timothy Naftali told The Washington Post after Trump’s November comments. “That’s what dictators do.”

Indeed. It also seems to be what the more extreme elements of the Kansas GOP do as well.

This isn’t the first startling incident this year, after all. In March, a gala gathering of the Johnson County GOP featured an effigy of President Joe Biden that attendees were invited to kick, punch and violently assault. It became a national story, more evidence of GOP excess in an era of unending excesses.

A lot of Kansas Republican leaders distanced themselves from that incident, saying the effigy was the work of an “outside exhibitor” who went too far trying to generate enthusiasm among gala attendees.

Nothing to see here, right?

Brown’s “infestation” comments won’t be so easy to disavow, though. He’s the leader of the party, communicating on its behalf.

But here’s the thing: I don’t believe that most rank-and-file Kansas Republicans — the folks who live in our communities and who might not live and breathe politics every day, but who go to the polls and dutifully cast their votes for GOP candidates — see their Democratic neighbors in such crude, contemptuous terms.

Disagree? Yes. See them as an “infestation?” No.

So I suspect Brown’s language is too extreme for the party he leads. I fervently hope so. It’s certainly too extreme for Kansas.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.

This story was originally published August 1, 2024 at 12:04 PM.