It’s the eve of a primary election in Kansas, which means that Republicans are duking it out over stuff like taxes, abortion, education spending­ - the issues that perpetually divide the party and generate lots of mail and ads and anger. It’s the kind of heated battle that you see in November in other states. In Kansas, they like to make sure the weather matches the politics.

Why are Sunflower primaries so bloody? It's the one-party problem. Virtually everyone in Kansas may be a Republican, but that just means the entire spectrum of political belief is jammed into one box and left to fight it out like cats. Really loud cats. Normally, the screeching is pretty predictable. Conservatives snarl away at spending, unrestricted abortions, taxes. Liberals snarl away at conservatives.
 
But this year, somebody poured water into the box. It was hosed in by a group of “moderate” Republicans who call themselves “Kansans for a Traditional Republican Majority.”
 
They certainly seem traditional, especially if your view of the GOP is the party of Rockefeller. The KTRM website has photos of Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum-Baker, implying endorsements that don't exist, and proclaims the organization's dedication to a “new style of leadership.” They claim that Kansans are “tired of the politics of hatred and alienation and…fed up with politics that seek to divide our families, our communities, and our Party.”

Maybe they need a snapshot of Joe McCarthy on that site, since KTRM, fueled with money from, among other places, a Missouri multimillionaire and a powerful PAC run by the frightened  “moderate” Republicans who lead the Kansas state senate, has been sending out good, old fashioned, traditional hate mail designed to do exactly what the group claims people don’t want to see in politics any more.

The flyers accuse conservative Republicans of wanting to put parents in prison for trying to get medical treatment for their kids and for condemning cancer victims to an early death. To amplify the message, a man named Ryan Wright has been hired to release statements accusing Republican conservatives of racism and having ties to the KKK because somebody at some other time in some other place got their hands on a mailing list owned by a white supremacist, David Duke, who was reviled for calling people ugly names (although at least he never called anyone a racist). Not surprisingly, this strident message is given even greater shrillness by the state’s hopeless press, who are often eager to call conservatives very ugly names indeed.

There’s no truth to any of the KTRM’s ravings, of course. But the presence of such extremism in the middle of a campaign makes interesting debate impossible. Conservatives, for the most part, haven’t even hit back. Why should they? Trying to sell anger to already angry voters only marginalizes groups like KTRM­ who, after all, represent money more than members.

Unfortunately for the party, it also makes it harder for Republicans to unify after the dust of the primary season settles - which explains why, according to the indefatigable Kansas Meadowlark,  many of the same people who give money to the state's Democratic Party also fund KTRM.

No wonder Kris Kobach, the chairman of the state Republican Party, called the KTRM’s racism charges “absolutely inexcusable.”

Long term goals aren’t part of the KTRM strategy, though. The fact that Steve Morris, John Vratil and Derek Schmidt, the senate's leadership, donated $45,000 to KTRM suggests that permanently poisoning the political atmosphere in the state senate is worth it if they can preserve their jobs. The Republican senate leadership traditionally works with Democrats, the Democratic governor and liberal-leaning legislators to defeat conservative initiatives.

In an interview with KansasLiberty, Morris contended that conservatives had recruited candidates to run against liberal-leaning incumbents, leaving the senate leadership with no choice but to give money to KTRM. He also admitted that the senate leadership had donated money to defeat conservatives who weren’t running against incumbents, too.

So if the reason for funding KTRM's hate campaign is to defeat conservatives running against "moderate" incumbents and to defeat conservatives running against "moderates" who aren't incumbents, I'm thinking the general idea is to defeat conservatives, wherever they can be found. After all, if those right-wingers win a few more senate seats, Morris, Vratil and Schmidt will just be names on some desks in the back of a big room.

So by now the politics of moderation are so deafening that even the state GOP’s leaders, who usually have to stand back, plug their ears and let the cats fight, can’t stay out of this one. "This," said Kobach in an email, "is the first time in my life that I have ever heard a Republican organization call another Republican a racist. Not just in Kansas, but anywhere in the United States."

Kobach said the KTRM ploy seemed kind of familiar. “Many will recall that during the Third District congressional race of 2004, Dennis Moore pulled a similar stunt with me and ran approximately half a million dollars' worth of TV ads proclaiming that I had 'ties' to white supremacists," he said. "Same tortured logic. Through six degrees of separation, you can link anybody to any horrible belief. However, that was done by Moore and Democrat Party. This is being done by people who call themselves Republicans.”

Well, Paul Morrison and Mark Parkinson called themselves Republicans, too, and my mother called me beautiful. So maybe Kansans shouldn’t be surprised that using racial rhetoric and exploiting the misery of the sick and the fears of parents are now acceptable ways for “moderates” to win their argument that conservatives aren't moderate enough.

Good thing, since, thanks to KTRM, there's one thing about Kansas politics everybody now understands: Extremism in defense of moderation is a necessity.

Denis Boyles is the author of Superior, Nebraska, a book mostly about Kansas.