Red Letter Day

Well, any chance that I would vote for Kevin Yoder for Congress pretty much evaporated after reading his embarrassing, evasive answers to some real softball questions asked by citizens on this Journal-World voter chat.

I am sure Yoder has experienced campaign operatives advising him to ruthlessly Stay On Message and don’t say anything controversial but his attempts to do so in the context of the simple questions asked on this forum were a joke. There were only five questions asked, none of them very difficult, and by my count, Yoder completely ignored two of them (on bipartisanship and gay rights), provided a partial answer to two of them (on drug legalization and roadway safety) , and only gave a decent answer to one question, on health care, probably because for that one he at least had a nice canned answer prepared in advance.

Yoder’s responses to the question on partisanship was a complete non sequitur; he was asked if his political philosophy had changed (he was known as being moderate to liberal in the Kansas House) and his reply – talking about the federal government spending too much money – was like he hadn’t even read the question. Yoder was later asked if he supported gay rights, specifically about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (because in the past he had been endorsed by a gay political group) and he replied with a non-answer about the Kansas marriage law that says marriage was between one man and one woman, which he said he supported (although as a state legislator he voted AGAINST an amendment on this issue). He didn’t mention Don’t Ask Don’t Tell at all, although he at least gets a D- for answering the part of the question about the Federal marriage law.

Moving down the list, Yoder’s answer to the question about legalizing drugs was buried at the end of a rant that can basically be summed up as “California, you suck!” which doesn’t strike me as being terribly relevant to the actual question, although hey, at the end Yoder does actually answer it by saying he’s opposed to drug legalization.

So, finally, at the very end of the entire “chat”, a solid unequivocal answer!

Yoder’s a young guy, but he can apparently dodge and weave like an old pro. This actually kind of stinks, because I would like to vote for an intelligent moderate with some fresh ideas who can work together with both parties and get stuff done. Apparently voters in the third district don’t have that option with either party.