The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

This morning on ABC’s “This Week”, Brownback went on the offensive against Bush on the issue of spying:

Brownback, on ABC’s “This Week,” said the Senate Intelligence Committee also will hold hearings - closed to the public - on the NSA program.

“I think this is something that bears looking into and us to be able to establish a policy within constitutional frameworks of what a president can or cannot do,” said Brownback, considered a presidential hopeful for 2008.

He said he was “troubled by what the basis for the grounds that the administration says that they did these on, the legal basis, and I think we need to look at that far more broadly and understand it a great deal.”

More from Think Progress:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don’t think the 9/11 resolution gave the president the authority for this program?

BROWNBACK: It didn’t, in my vote. I voted for that resolution. That was a week after 9/11. There was nothing you were going to do to stop us from going to war in Afghanistan, but there was no discussion in anything that I was around that that gave the president a broad surveillance authority with that resolution.

Brownback seems to believe this is a winning issue and has begun to outright oppose the president. That last statement Brownback made sounds like a Democratic sound bite. Good for him, and I agree that President Bush does not have the right to spy on American citizens without a warrant.

This fits into my thoughts about Brownback’s presidential strategy. He is so unknown on the national stage, that he needs to have some prominent differences from the Bush Administration to get news coverage. This certainly counts. Additionally, this is just a precursor to the amount of airtime he will get during the Alito nominations. More on that in the next post.

Senator Brownback will likely attempt to use this break from the white house to paint himself as a maverick who speaks his mind and goes with his convictions. I don’t think the American people will buy that.