The strange Senate dance in Kansas continues, with each player and party acting on its rationally contrarian self-interest in pursuit of a Senate majority. Republicans in Kansas are determined to force the Democrats to field a candidate, while Democrats won't rest until their ballot line is vacant this November. And then in the middle of it all is independent candidate Greg Orman, who knows he's got it made.

Democrats won the latest battle late yesterday afternoon. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled against Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who had mischievously declared that he wouldn't remove erstwhile Democratic candidate Chad Taylor's name from the ballot, as Taylor requested. The court found that Taylor's letter of withdrawal did, indeed, satisfy legal requirements. For now, this narrows the race to a two-man contest between Orman and Roberts, one that's either neck-and-neck or lean-Orman in a state that's elected Republicans in every Senate election since 1932.

Advertisement:

But Kobach isn't finished yet. After yesterday's ruling dropped, he reiterated his position that Democrats need to field a candidate on the ballot. He went so far as to move the mailing date for absentee ballots back one week to Sept. 27, giving the Democrats eight days to somehow, some way, put forth a nominee. That in itself is a legally questionable move, since the law states that absentee ballots need to be mailed no later than 45 days before the election. Kobach, however, argues that "federal law would allow him to postpone the mailing date of overseas absentee ballots as long as the ballots had a 45-day window to be counted."

The spectacle of Kansas Democrats fighting tooth-and-nail to have no Democratic Senate candidate this year and Kansas Republicans working equally as hard to ensure themselves a Democratic opponent is producing all sorts of comically cynical quotes for posterity. For just one example, feast your eyes on how Roberts' campaign manager responded to the ruling yesterday: The court is disenfranchising "Democrat" voters! We all know how concerned the Republican Party is these days about the disenfranchisement of "Democrat" voters: