Leadership Quote by Dennis Moore

Anxiety is doing most of the work here. Moore doesn’t even need to name the offending policy, scandal, or cultural brawl in Kansas; he just points to “what is happening” and lets the listener’s imagination supply the nightmare. It’s a politician’s version of a knowing look: vague enough to travel, specific enough to sting.

The quote’s intent is protective and prosecutorial at once. By reporting what “people have said,” Moore borrows the authority of the crowd without owning the accusation outright. That framing is a classic shield: he can validate the fear (“you’re not alone”) while keeping plausible deniability about exactly who’s to blame. He positions himself as the firewall between two capitals - Washington’s national power and Kansas’s local turbulence - suggesting that whatever Kansas represents (partisan extremism, policy dysfunction, culture-war overreach, fiscal mess) is contagious.

The subtext is less about Kansas than about Washington’s reputation for metastasizing bad incentives. If Kansas is the cautionary tale, Washington is the petri dish. Moore is also quietly flattering his audience: you’re the sensible center, the grown-ups who see the storm coming and want it stopped.

Contextually, it reads like the kind of line that surfaces when a state becomes shorthand for a broader political mood - when local governance turns into a national parable. Kansas isn’t just a place in this sentence; it’s a warning label.