Horrigan: How evangelicals flipped Missouri : Stltoday

Horrigan: How evangelicals flipped Missouri : Stltodayl

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Missouri used to be such a normal place. Republicans dressed better, if you like pants with ducks on them, but otherwise you could barely tell them from the Democrats.

A bellwether, they called the state. Before 2008, Missourians picked the winner in 24 of the previous 25 presidential elections. We were a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, a little bit soul.
Then something strange happened. I've been trying to figure out what.

Claire McCaskill came by the office to see us. I asked her what she thought it was. She said she would prefer not to answer, since we were on the record.

I understood her reluctance. She is defending her U.S. Senate seat against U.S. Rep. Todd Akin. He personifies how weird things have gotten. Even many of his fellow Republicans are treating him like a guy in a tinfoil hat walking down the street talking to himself.

Chris Koster came by the office to see us. He is the Joni Mitchell of Missouri politics, a “both sides now" guy who was a Republican state senator before switching parties to make a successful run for state attorney general in 2008. Now he's defending his seat against Republican Ed Martin, yet another sterling example of the modern Missouri GOP. I asked Koster what happened to Missouri.

“There are no braking decisions on the right side now,” he said. He pointed to efforts in the mid-2000s by then-state Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, to criminalize stem cell research that might be used for human cloning. “You've got Jim Sowers (founder of Kansas City's Sowers Institute of Medical Research) and my friend Matt Bartle wants to put him in prison for 15 years on a [class] B felony.”