An open letter to
Sen. Jerry Moran:
As each generation is called, America’s freedoms and democracy are defended by large actions of heroes and by smaller acts of individual courage.
A Senate vote to convict former President Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” awaits.
You’ve said you will vote against conviction, that “a former president should not be subject to impeachment.”
But our generation is called. This is your time to defend the Constitution.
There are many Democrats, quite a few independents and some Republicans you represent who believe you should vote to convict the former president. They believe it is the right decision for America because it signals our democracy is strong and because consequences for insurrection protect against future attacks like that of Jan. 6.
A majority of Americans say Donald Trump should be convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors. But Kansas is a deep red state, and it is likely many, if not most, of your Republican constituents want you to vote to acquit him.
Your re-election looms in 2022, and with it is a fear that any misstep could earn you a primary opponent.
You have a choice. Consider two other Kansans.
Kansas’ beloved native son, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, is one of those big heroes. He launched the D-Day invasion, a risk on which the fate of America and the world hinged. But then he returned to quarters and penned the remarkable outline of a speech he hoped never to deliver: He assumed full personal responsibility should the invasion fail. Ike on that day re-wrote the definition of personal courage.
THE CALL TO DEFEND democracy often comes in smaller ways, as it did decades after Ike, on the plains of Kansas.
Some have described Calvin James of Jewell as a Republican kingmaker, although he would not like that term. James, who died in 2002, was GOP National Committeeman and First District Republican chairman. A eulogy in the Congressional Record by Sen. Pat Roberts described James as “a textbook study in the pursuit of politics for the public good, not personal gain.”
James left his imprint on every major GOP officeholder in western Kansas and beyond. He roamed the state recruiting precinct workers and looking for promising political talent. One of his finds was a young Hays Attorney named Jerry Moran.
In the 1990s, James became alarmed as his party was taken over by the evangelical religious right. A staunch Methodist, he believed strongly in the separation of church and state. James saw the rise of narrow issue politics based on religion as a threat to his party and thus to democracy.
