INDEPENDENCE, Kan. – As Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) toured this state earlier this week with Robert J. Dole, the former Republican leader waxed nostalgic about the bipartisanship deal-making that marked his days running the Senate.
Dole specifically criticized Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) for his role in last fall’s government shutdown. An ailing Kansas legend at 91, Dole still has his signature wit. He told one crowd, “Some of those guys are so far on the right they’re gonna fall out of the Capitol.”
But the message from the Roberts campaign was starkly different here Thursday morning, when Sarah Palin swooped into Independence to bestow her grass-roots tea party credibility on the surprisingly troubled Roberts re-election campaign.
Palin praised Roberts as a rock-ribbed conservative “who will fight like our country’s future depends on it.” And the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential nominee thanked Roberts for standing alongside Cruz in filibustering funding for President Obama’s signature health-care law, a move which resulted in the shutdown.
“He’s not wishy-washy on the fence like you know who, the other guy,” Palin said, a reference to Roberts’s opponent, independent candidate Greg Orman. “I am so thankful because we need those with that stiff spine, with the principles that are so invicted [sic] within them, that they take a side.”
The contrast between Dole and Palin underscores both the troubles for Roberts here at home and the sudden urgency for the national Republican Party in holding a Senate seat in conservative Kansas that is in serious jeopardy.
Surrogates from across the party’s ideological spectrum have been in Kansas this week or are due here in coming days to stump with Roberts, including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.).
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