Righteous rage, impotent fury: Thomas Frank returns to Kansas to hunt the last days of Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts

On eve of a possible GOP rout, Frank goes home to rediscover the matter with Kansas and all American politics

PRAIRIE VILLAGE, KANSAS – One of the treasured vanities of my home state of Kansas is the idea that, although we are the nation’s laggards and late-comers in so many ways, there are other departments in which we are way ahead of everyone else, savoring the fast-food treats you will one day savor and debating the issues that you, too, will agonize over before too long. It’s an understandable fantasy for a people who are constantly reminded by the culture at large how lame and uncool they are, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t coming true, for once, in 2014. This week, Kansas may well be the one state that bucks all the national political trends.

Here you have several prominent conservatives, Republicans in one of the most Republican states in the country, running in a year that looks to be a Republican sweep nationwide, and these Kansas Republicans are either behind in the polls or barely keeping pace with their Democratic opponents.