Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas now has an approval rating of 18%. This comes after basically destroying the state’s fiscal standing with a series of tax cuts that nearly bankrupted the state. In other words, supply-side orthodoxy was tried, failed miserably and comically and now the author of the reforms is amazingly unpopular.
The problem with this picture is that a lot of the disaster happened before he came up for reelection in 2014. And he was really, really unpopular then. But of course, he won.
That’s why people thought Democrats had a good shot at taking not only the Governorship but even a Senate seat – in the guise of a likely-Dem caucusing independent.
But to a lot of people’s surprise, neither of those things ended up happening. Brownback got into office, pushed through the full supply-side gospel. To almost everyone’s judgment it was a total failure. He got really, really unpopular and yet he still won reelection.
It’s just the single state of Kansas but it tells you a lot about the polarization, governmental dysfunction and the breakdown of much of the political process in this country.
