Well, I’m not in Kansas anymore. I’m back in Tennessee, but I’m borrowing WiFi in the lobby of an auto-repair establishment (don’t ask the details) while trying to get home.

But being back in the Volunteer state did remind me that I wanted to comment on a recent New York Times piece that ran just before our state primaries. The story is about the brutal, at times, race to win the GOP nomination to chase the U.S. Senate seat that for years belonged to the courtly Lamar Alexander.

The establishment candidate, Bill Hagerty won the race, but it was tight. The Times team focused, of course, on the toxic existence of Citizen Donald Trump. The president’s endorsement of Hagerty was important, but that was only one reason that Tennessee Republicans — at least the ones I know — were so torn up in this race.

But there’s no need to discuss cultural and religious issues in a Bible Belt state like Tennessee when you can focus exclusively on You. Know. Who. Thus, this double-decker headline:

Tennessee Republicans, Once Moderate and Genteel, Turn Toxic in the Trump Era

In the Senate primary race to replace Lamar Alexander, two candidates are fighting to see who can better emulate the president. It isn’t pretty.

The thesis statement near the end adds:

What is perhaps already clear, however, is that the Republican Party that Mr. Alexander long sought to shape — a “governing party,” he once wrote, that translated “principled ideas” into “real solutions” — is not the one he will ultimately leave behind.

Both of the major candidates were conservatives, but one — Hagerty — had a blue-chip GOP establishment heritage, with ties to President George W. Bush. The other, Dr. Manny Sethi — an Indian-American, Harvard-educated surgeon at Vanderbilt University hospital — was clearly running as the outsider.

Believe it or not, Trump backed the GOP establishment guy even as Sethi attempted to appeal to voters on many of Trump’s cultural issues.