Fresh off being the worst Cabinet-level disaster since Donald Rumsfeld, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is considering a run for the United Senate from Kansas. Talk about insanity!
The New York Times reports:
Several Democrats said this week that Ms. Sebelius had been mentioned with growing frequency as someone who could wage a serious challenge to Mr. Roberts, 77, who is running for a fourth term and is considered vulnerable. One person who spoke directly to Ms. Sebelius said that she was thinking about it, but added that it was too soon to say how seriously she was taking the idea.
Senator Pat Roberts has been in Congress for 34 years — 16 years in the House and the last 18 years in the Senate. Granted that’s not as long as some Senators, but this does make him vulnerable given the strong anti-incumbency mood in America today — especially in the Tea Party movement.
In fact, the Tea Party movement has rallied behind a Republican challenger to Pat Roberts named Dr. Milton Wolf. The Tea Party Express, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the Madison Project have all backed Wolf.
If Sebelius believes that Wolf has a legitimate chance of defeating Roberts in the primary, that will make her much more likely to run for the Senate. After all, candidates who have never run for elective office before tend to make mistakes — and she could capitalize on that to win even in conservative Kansas. After all, Kansans did elect her governor. She’ll have until June 2 to make her decision to run, which is a month before the Republican primary contest between Roberts and Wolf is decided (August 5).
Why is Martin Wolf more vulnerable than Pat Roberts in the general election?
And why should pro-life Catholics rally behind Pat Roberts in order to keep this seat in pro-life hands?
I need only one paragraph from this news story from the Topeka Capital-Journal (follow the link to see the reporter confront Wolf on it):
U.S. Senate candidate Milton Wolf posted a collection of gruesome X-ray images of gunshot fatalities and medical injuries to his Facebook page and participated in online commentary layered with macabre jokes and descriptions of carnage.
Wolf later apologized. Which is good, but it won’t stop Democrats from running ads about it all day — if Wolf were to defeat Roberts in the August 5 primary. What better way for Sebelius to deflect her mistakes as HHS Secretary than to have Milton Wolf as her general election opponent? You can almost hear her say: “Yeah, I had some problems with a website, but they didn’t involve posting X-ray pictures of dead people and laughing at their expense.”
In which case, Kathleen Sebelius would get the last laugh.