Time magazine has an interesting article that summarizes the Christian Right’s uneasy feelings about the current crop of front runners for 2008. Their comment on Brownback:
Many conservatives had high hopes for Virginia’s George Allen and Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum–until they lost their Senate re-election races last year. And Evangelicals say they adore all-but-announced contender Sam Brownback, a former Evangelical who converted to Catholicism and is one of the Senate’s most ardent opponents of embryonic-stem-cell research and gay marriage. But they are skeptical that the Kansas Senator can broaden his appeal enough beyond religious voters to have a chance of winning.
Brownback now has to prove he has “what it takes” to run for president before the money and volunteers come pouring in from the conservative Christians. Ironically, money and volunteers are used as a metric for early success. Howard Dean overcame this same dilemma in 2003 by reaching out on the internet to build a vast small donor network but one look at Brownback’s pitiful website should make it obvious that internet strategy is currently not a priority.
Brownback will likely attempt to do the same thing except through existing church groups and bible studies. This takes plenty of face time, but time is the only resource Brownback has in his advantage at this point.
3 Comments
I wonder if Brownback’s religious background(s) might turn out to be his undoing. Has anti-Catholic bigotry really disappeared so completely among American evangelicals that they’d enthusiastically support an evangelical convert to Catholicism?
I’m not a member of either group, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a bit of suspicion toward Brownback among members of both denominations.
Heck, I’m a conservative and I despise Brownback. I think you should forget about talking about his faith – that’s just bigotted.
Look at his other views – he is against Net Neutrality, for goodness sake. That alone is enough to make most bloggers despise him.
Beth, I agree with most of what you said, but to bring up Brownback’s religious extremism is purely American, not bigotted in any way. We must fight this sort of zealotry or we will lose even more of what our founding fathers fought for than we already have under Bush.
As for the net neutrality, this is not just about bloggers. This affects all Americans who use the internet and puts more money in the pockets of the corporations.