The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

From Reuters:

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a leading foe of abortion, hailed Alito as an “outstanding jurist” after his own meeting with the nominee. But Brownback also said he was concerned how he would rule on abortion on the Supreme Court.

Brownback said although Alito has voiced respect for Supreme Court precedent, like Roe v. Wade, “It looks like to me that he is open to review cases as he should be as a judge.”

The last line is thinly veiled code to the religious fundamentalists. Alito will vote against Roe. Brownback’s vision of a resurgence of back alley abortions and dead women is slowly coming true.

It appears that the so called “Gang of 14″ is disintegrating in the face of Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The collapse of the moderate’s compromise appears to be leading the country back toward the complicated parliamentary debate over the Nuclear Option. In case any of our reader have forgotten Senator Brownback’s position on the filibuster, a refresher is due:

“We’re going to do everything we can to stop it,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. He vowed to mount a filibuster, which allows a minority of senators to block a vote on the measure.

Yes, that is Sam Brownback vowing to use a filibuster on the Senate floor in order to prevent life-saving cures from being developed. Now to be fair, that is a piece of legislation and not a nomination from the President. I wonder if ‘ole Sam ever threatened to not allow a nomination to get an “up or down” vote…

Kansas Senator Sam Brownback used a parliamentary maneuver to block the nomination of Julie Finley to be US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe… To block Finley, Brownback exercised the privilege called a hold, by which a senator can put a presidential nomination in purgatory indefinitely.

There you have it. Senator Sam Brownback firmly believes in the Senate’s right to indefinitely hold a President’s nomination. I’m sure he would support the Democrats if the Senate goes nuclear. As a man of supposed strong character, he certainly would not want to flip flop on this issue…

“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.

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…

Senator Sam Brownback was on the Fox News morning show today and had the following to say about the White House’s nomination of Harriet Miers:

Them providing this type of information from the White House is almost a risk they assume when you nominate a candidate that’s from inside the White House. We’re going to have to see more information - not attorney-client privilege-type information - but more information of the work product that she was involved in the White House that is not of a legal nature but that’s of a policy nature.

Ahhh how times change. Suddenly Brownback is sporting the same talking points that Ted Kennedy used just a few weeks ago during the Robert’s nomination. Brownback’s questions put the White House in a bind. He has the ability to make life rough for Miers if he doesn’t get what he wants. As of this moment, the administration does not hold much bargaining power. Bush’s lack of popularity is causing intra-party dissent and Brownback is at the forefront.

Will the Whitehouse give up the documents that Brownback wants? My guess is no. There is no guarantee that the documents will satisfy him and giving in to the demands of a Junior Senator from Kansas would be a sign of weakness. Moreover, I doubt that Brownback really wants the documents. This is simply preparing cover for his eventual opposition. The more conflict the better for Brownback’s name recognition and ambitions.

There is writeup in today’s New York Times about Senator Sam Brownback’s aspirations for 2008. The article makes it very clear that Senator Brownback is running for president and discusses his total reliance on Christian Conservatives for votes. It also notes that Mier’s nomination gives Brownback a valuable means of publicity:

Before the debate over Ms. Miers, however, Mr. Brownback’s message was not carrying very far, some conservatives said.

“Sam would need, either by major legislation that he sponsored or by taking on the administration on something, to drastically increase his profile in order to have people around the country say, ‘Boy, that is the guy we want to support,’ ” Mr. Weyrich added.

The profile was overall quite positive. Articles like this are what could make Brownback a contender in 2008. This article alone may precipitate his inclusion in 2008 tracking polls.

The bottom line is Brownback is running and he could very well be formidable in a crowded GOP primary. Thankfully the Democrats would crush him in the general election if we ran anyone to the right of Che Guevara.