Cap-J: Ryun a ""Radical, Misogynistic, Fundamentalist on a Jihad from Hell"

Sometimes, the mainstream media just hands us gold- beautiful, unmitigated gold. God bless you, Tim Carpenter, god bless you.

Every political pundit, pretend or otherwise, from this blog to the halls of Kansas academia, have said the same thing regarding the "clean campaign pledge" Jim Ryun offered up to Lynn Jenkins: She would have had to have been a fool to sign it, and Ryun was a strategic genius for presenting it because, now, if Lynn ever does do the only thing she can do if she wants to win- bash Ryun over the head for being a horrible congressman- he'll "oh poor me" her all the way to the ballot box and a win in the primary.

To some of us who have been 'round the political playground in Kansas for while, this tactic from Mr. Ryun was eerily familiar- and a piece in the Topeka Capital-Journal on Sunday reminded us all why: Jim Ryun pulled the exact same shenanigans to save his political career in his very first campaign for office in 1996.

Ryun should have been a shoe-in in 1996- he was famous and all, and he was running against a Topeka attorney of whom no one had ever heard. But, John Freiden, Ryun's opponent in that first race, slammed away at Ryun for being what we all now agree he is: A man simply too radical and too out-of-touch to represent this district in Congress.

Ryun had offered Freiden the same clean campaign pledge he has now offered Jenkins, and Freiden rejected it for the exact same reason Jenkins did: The underdog can't give away the only trick they have when they're going up against the big cheese.

[Chris] Wilson, founder of the polling firm Wilson Research Service, said the 1996 Ryun campaign knew the pledge was a disadvantage to Freiden and that it would be foolish for him to sign. If Freiden joined in, Wilson said, the absence of meaningful TV ads would have made it impossible for him to gain traction among voters.

Good thing Frieden realized it, too, because harping away on Jim Ryun for being a loony nearly won him a seat in Congress. On that same coin, ignoring that pledge is also what lost him is seat in Congress, but only because Jim Ryun decided to ignore it, too.

Why on Earth did Ryun do that? He looked around, saw that he was losing, and tossed his own "clean campaign" pledge out the window, and slammed Frieden ceaselessly for hurting poor little Jimmy's feelings and calling him out for what he really is: A radical.

But, if there's one thing we call know now, Jim Ryun is really, really good at playing the victim, and the minute his pledge to wage a clean campaign was in his way, he went negative and he went negative hard to bash his message of victimhood home.

Freiden said Ryun and independent political groups struck in the final week of the campaign, starting with criticism of his dismissal of the pledge. Other Kansas political candidates surrendered airtime they had purchased to give Ryun and his advocates opportunity to consume all of the political oxygen, he said.

That move was accompanied by a telephone appeal in which callers claimed, among other things, that Freiden's position on abortion was responsible for "killing babies."

"You could see it going away," Freiden said. "He won with pure negative campaigning. That's how he pulled it off."

It all comes down to exactly the worst kind of politics of convenience, the very worst kind of "these are my values..until they aren't" politics, and a quality you wouldn't expect from a good Christan: A willingness to stand up in front of people and lie through his teeth. He was perfectly happy to stay positive as long as he was in control of the message and winning- the minute he wasn't....well, you get the picture.

Fast forward to 2008 and we find a telling quote:

"We're fully prepared to run a positive campaign, but we will defend ourselves against false and negative attacks," said Kyle Robertson, Ryun's campaign manager.

They'll defend themselves against false attacks & negative ones, too. Of course they should defend themselves from false accusations- no one can begrudge them that. But even take a negative tone against them, even for an instance say "Jim Ryun wasn't a good congressman because of X-Y-Z" they're going to come after you like a bat out of hell. Not because you lied, no siree Bob, but because you dared to say something not nice.

It's stunning Ryun and his campaign are as arrogant as they are, trying to flim-flam the voters into feeling sorry for them. But, in the end, our guess is Ryun is going to be able to moan and groan as loud as he wants that he's getting picked on...but, this time around, the voters just aren't going ot care.

The kicked you out for a reason, my man...and you just don't get it.

KC Star: 2nd District Primary is Going to be Hot

Poor Jim Ryun- and poor Lynn Jenkins, too- the only thing the media cares about is Jim's clean campaign pledge that Lynn laughed (rightly) off the table.

You know it’s a hot congressional race when even talk of running a clean campaign turns nasty.

That’s what happened when Jim Ryun asked his Republican primary opponent, Kansas Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, to make their contest a polite one. Ryun, the track star who held Kansas’ 2nd District congressional seat for 10 years, said he got no response.

“She doesn’t show any interest in running anything other than a disappointing campaign,” he said last week.

But Jenkins said it is Ryun who disappointed her after outside groups from Washington spent thousands to denounce Jenkins in a round of television ads.

“This is a guy who has already spent — or his cronies in Washington spent — $120,000 running ads in this district that have distorted my record,” she said.

Snap. We're totally on Lynn's side in this one- Jim Ryun is trying to run the same kind of campaign against her that he ran against Congresswoman Nancy Boyda twice- he's desperately trying to make the issue the fact she's not worthy of being elected, so we'll all ignore the fact he was a horrible Member of Congress. Now, Lynn isn't worthy of being elected, but certainly not because she's pointing out the fact that Jim was, in fact, a horrible Member of Congress.

Here's another little tidbit-

Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 43 percent to 29 percent. The district overwhelmingly re-elected President Bush in 2004, yet Democrats have held the congressional seat almost as often as Republicans during the past 40 years.

Also, those numbers make Boyda's 68% approval rating and her head-to-head match ups against both Ryun & Jenkins look pretty sweet- and evidence her work against illegal immigration and to bring our men and women home from Iraq with honor have resonated with the voters of her district.

AP Analysis: Clean Campaign Only Benefits Ryun

A wonderful little bit of political analysis was provided by AP reporter John Hanna over the weekend regarding Jim Ryun's request Lynn Jenkins hobble her primary campaign against him with a pledge to never mention him.

We've already made the same point, but it's always nice to have your sense of things re-enforced by outside forces.

Ryun, the congressman ousted in 2006, and his GOP rival, State Treasurer Lynn Jenkins, filed for office hours apart last week. In between, Ryun issued his call for a campaign free of the negative attacks that he said tend to alienate voters.

[...]

Jenkins shows no signs of accepting the pledge, but if she did, it could limit her campaign against Ryun. If she rejects the pledge, Ryun is almost certain to point that fact out to voters in a bid for their support.

It's an unfortunate lose-lose for Jenkins. If she doesn't mention Ryun in her TV buys, she can't draw the distinctions between them that are going to be necessary in order for her to beat him. And, if she doesn't sign the "clean campaign pledge," Ryun's going to make sure every single person in the district knows she plays dirty. Neither place are places Jenkins should want to be. Hanna agrees:

Not mentioning Ryun by name would make it difficult to contrast Ryun's voting record with her positions. Ryun's clean campaign means one devoid of the criticism of him that needs to take root in voters' minds for her to win.

[...]

Thus, Ryun has reasons to call for a clean campaign outside of any desire to respect voters' sensitivities. He has the potential to gain an advantage over Jenkins, regardless of how she responds.

We also just love the false sentiment from Jim Ryun- he's just doing this for the voters! No, Jim, you're doing this in an attempt to save your own ass.

And, really, this is an interesting pivot for Ryun to make. After all, just like Hanna says when he cited a 2004 ad Ryun ran against now-Congresswoman Nancy Boyda featuring a picture of Osama Bin Laden, Ryun has been known for playing particularly dirty- which is certainly something Lynn Jenkins is willing to point out:

Jenkins was skeptical. She noted that last year, she was the target of ads by national groups, describing them as "buddies" of Ryun's. Ryun's campaign has said there was no coordination.

And, suggesting she wouldn't take the pledge, she said: "Unfortunately, everybody knows that Jim Ryun didn't do a lot for us in Washington, D.C."

After months of trading jabs up and down the 2nd District, we can't expect anything different now that they're official candidates. We just can't wait for their pre-primary TV!