The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

“I commend the president and congratulate Judge Alito on this nomination, and I look forward to the upcoming confirmation hearing, during which members of the Judiciary Committee will have a robust and, I hope, civil dialogue with the nominee about the meaning of the Constitution and the role of the courts in American life.”

Senator Brownback will have no problem agreeing with this nomination. Alito’s “stone age” conception of women’s rights fits with Brownback’s own ideas about the place of women.

Make no mistake, Samuel Alito would be a disaster for personal rights in America.

Thus the real fight begins.

Speaking on NPR (via the Wichita Eagle):

“She had no record. And the record that was available was in the White House and that was not going to be provided to us. It was the sort of thing, she was caught between where she serves and where the president had nominated her to serve.

“The Senate was just not willing to give its advice and consent blindly on a position of such importance to the future of the country.

“This was a nominee that was put forward that the president knew very well, but the rest of the country did not. This is going to be arguably the swing vote on the Supreme Court.”

Will the President nominate someone who’s views are known? He can’t do that and appease the conservatives. My guess? I think there will be some back room deals before the next nominee is announced that will assure conservative Senators of the new nominee’s bonafides while still keeping them veiled to the general public. The white house would love to be able to pull another “John Roberts” and have the nominee cruise through.

Or we’ll have a knock down, drag out, bloody, nuclear confirmation battle for the future of our country.

I suspect we’ll see some movement soon on picking a new nominee. The administration needs to divert attention from its corrupt and treasonous members.

Harriet Miers is gone. She was an extremely poor choice for the court and I was certainly not the only blogger to predict her withdrawal. Some would (and probably will) say that Senator Sam Brownback seems to have won.

In reality, this is a severe blow to his presidential aspirations. He needed the bright lights and stage of the judicial committee hearings. His low name recognition requires conflict and fireworks. In fact, this is the worst possible outcome for Brownback. He now needs to leverage the small amount of recognition he received from his pseudo-opposition of Miers to become a loud and abrasive spokesman for another cause. This will be a real test of his political acumen because the Miers nomination was an unintended gift from the White House. Brownback just had to sit back and enjoy. Now he must make himself seem an important expert in other areas.

I think he will attempt to become the leading hawk on Iran. Iran’s President has been making idiotic statements about Israel lately and Brownback has a long history of being antagonistic towards the Iranian government. He added $3 million to the budget to “promote democracy in Iran” and is fighting to have it spent.

The next nomination will almost certainly be split more conventionally down party lines. I don’t see Brownback playing a significant part in that debate.

Vintage Brownback via the DSCC:

“Perjury and obstruction of justice are crimes against the state. Perjury goes directly against the truth-finding function of the judicial branch of government.” [Congressional Record, 2/12/99]

From the talk show appearances so far this week it appears that part of the Republican spin on any Plamegate indictments will be that perjury and obstruction of justice are not real crimes. How times have changed. I seem to remember not so long ago something along the lines of “It’s not the sex, it’s the lies…”

In any case, Senators like Brownback should take careful notice of what they say now. Many of them are on record as concluding perjury to be an impeachable offense.

The U.S. House of Representatives sent a bill to the Senate that would allow a resurgence of hope for millions of Americans stricken with diseases that may be treated or cured with stem cell research. What does the Senate do? Nothing. The Hill reports:

“The leader will move to bring the bill to the Senate for action next year, likely before the Easter recess,” Eric Ueland, Frist’s chief of staff, said in an e-mail. “The Senate is in no position to have the type of thoughtful and focused debate this issue deserves in the time it has before adjourning prior to Thanksgiving.”

While the Senate dawdles, American researchers fall farther behind scientists in other (more receptive) countries. Every year, 13,000 children are diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes. 360,000 adults are diagnosed with Alzheimers. Can the Senate really afford to wait?

Meanwhile, Brownback is chomping at the bit to crush thousands of children’s hope for a cure to their disease:

“The vote in the House to allow taxpayer-funded destruction of young human lives is deeply troubling,” Brownback said. “We all have a duty to protect the innocent, and this vote represents a failure to recognize the scientific fact that stem-cell research that destroys embryos kills young human children.”

While Brownback is a brutal, heartless and uncaring political opportunist, never let it be said that he doesn’t know how to frame an argument. He conveniently leaves out the fact that the embryos used for research would have been thrown out anyway. I wonder why he doesn’t talk about it? Could it be that the vast majority of Americans support stem cell research on embryos that are to be discarded?

Stem cell research is one of the areas that could destroy Brownback’s chances at being President. His position is only popular with the abortion clinic bombers and their ilk. America should be at the forefront of research that could enrich its citizen’s lives. To retard this progress for political gains is morally reprehensible.

As I mentioned yesterday, Brownback’s records request to the White House for Harriet Miers’ policy work while there was the last chance for the White House to get Brownback’s vote. The LA Times reports on what Bush decided:

Bush told reporters today that making public such information would dampen the freedom of staff members, in this and future administrations, to give the president unvarnished advice, and “that would make it impossible for me and other presidents to be able to make sound decisions.”

“They may ask for paperwork about the decision-making process, what her recommendations were, and that would breach very important confidentiality,” Bush said, adding: “It’s a red line I’m not willing to cross.

By not crossing that line Bush has guaranteed Brownback’s opposition of Miers. There is no way Brownback could vote for Miers now short of her explicitly stating disagreement with Roe v. Wade during the hearings. That will never happen.

So Brownback will vote against Miers. What does this mean for the nominee’s future? I have to say it doesn’t look like she will be confirmed. My WAG (Wild Ass Guess) would be that yesterday she had a 65% chance of confirmation and today she has a 35% chance. Perhaps not even that much. If Brownback succeeds in whipping the religious right to a fever pitch of opposition he could conceivably swing 6-10 GOP senators. Miers is likely kaput.

Who comes out the winner? Senator Sam Brownback. If only he can avoid denigrating our intelligence officers long enough to enjoy it…

From Monday’s New York Times:

Congressional Republicans have also been signaling that they want to put some distance between their agenda and the White House’s potential legal and political woes, seeking to cast the leak case as an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon of little interest to most voters.

“I think we just need to stick to our knitting on the topics and the subjects the American people care about,” Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

I would think the American people would care about treason. I would hope that the American people care about protecting those who protect us abroad. By attempting to belittle the endangering of intelligence assets Brownback is showing his true colors. He only cares about protecting Americans when their husbands agree with his party. He isn’t concerned about building intelligence networks and trivializes the dangers that covert operatives endure every day in an attempt to keep us safe.

This is pure party politics and stinks of the of Republican culture of corruption.

Take a look at this UPI Newswire story.

Read it? Notice what stands out?

It is not news. Brownback has been saying such things for weeks. That is why this is important. The UPI Newswire wrote a story solely around the fact that Brownback went on television this morning. Previously his comments (if not news worthy) were buried in summaries of the entire morning show slate. This story was filed not because of the content, but because of the messenger. That is a major milestone for a candidate who is struggling for name recognition. Of course once UPI starts covering Brownback’s every move then the other media outlets will eventually have to follow…

I have a feeling these are going to become a dime a dozen in the next few weeks. Knight Ridder news service wrote a profile detailing Brownback’s ambitions for the presidency and the potential pitfalls along the way. If you are a long-time reader of The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog then this analysis is nothing new. It is, however, another name recognition feather in Brownback’s hat. Some particularly interesting tidbits follow:

Rolling Stone magazine - yes, that Rolling Stone - has a lengthy Brownback profile in the works. The Washington Post is in line.

Rolling Stone is going to have a field day with Brownback. I can’t wait.

His increasingly frequent trips to the key early states of Iowa and New Hampshire - not to mention Michigan, South Carolina and, most recently, Ohio - are garnering increasing attention in the national press, which tends to feed on itself. (A week after The New York Times placed Brownback at top front, the paper followed him to New Hampshire for an inside feature.)

Of course the press feeds on itself. Would Knight Ridder be featuring a Brownback story had the New York Times not done theirs?

Whether the national media and party activists continue to pay attention to Brownback as 2008 edges ever closer may well depend on whether he can become a candidate who doesn’t simply share the values of the social conservatives, but a candidate who inspires them and attracts others.

“Is he running purely because of personal ambition, or is he the head of a movement?” Sabato asked. “We remember the heads of movements.”

Obviously this is the key. The media has not decided whether Brownback is a serious candidate yet because they haven’t decided if the Religious Right is a true force for deciding primaries. No one knows for sure how they will turn out after being riled to such levels. They are the joker in the deck and Brownback is putting all in betting that they will come out at the correct time.