Kansas City's Pitch Weekly, makes a good point about the Kansas Republican Party's new Loyalty Committe:

...when your party is nearly bankrupt and your brightest stars are bailing ranks and winning for the opposite team, maybe it's not a bad idea to put the fear of God (or, in this case, Chairman Kris Kobach) back into the hearts of unfaithful members.

They then go on to list a few local organizations that would benefit from the formation of a "Loyalty Committee" to keep an eye on their members. Here's my favorite:

JoCo DA Phill Kline: Staffers must sign waivers agreeing to wiretaps in their offices and to fetch Phill a Slim-Fast when he's too busy posting propaganda on the DA Web site.

In a move that could have been taken out of the Kansas Republican Party's loyalty playbook, TPMmuckraker reports the Republican National Committee is "auditing" voters' party affiliations.

What 83 year-old William Sidwell of Queen City, Missouri found in his mailbox last week scared him. It was a letter from the Republican National Committee, but it seemed to bear grave news: "Our records show that you registered as a member of our Party in Schuyler County, MO," the letter said.

"But a recent audit of your Party affiliation turned up some irregularities."

What sort of irregularities?

The letter, it turns out, is just a misleading pitch for a contribution to the RNC -- one of the "irregularities" cited in the letter is that "I cannot find a record of you taking a single action in support of the Republican Party -- not locally, not nationally!" A contribution, the letter suggests, would help set the record straight.

The Republican Party: Join Us...Or Else.

As the furor over the Kansas Republican Party’s “Loyalty Committee” grows, we have to wonder what they were thinking. We anticipate they thought of themselves like this… …when most Kansans just see them like this… ..or worse: