The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

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.