The Anti-Sam Brownback Blog

The Wichita Eagle is reporting a group of evangelical leaders will be running TV advertisements in Kansas with the goal of persuading Senator Sam Brownback to work towards reducing global warming:

A group called the Evangelical Climate Initiative will begin airing television ads in Kansas in the next two weeks urging the government to pay more attention to global warming. They’re courting Brownback, a leading Christian conservative in Congress, to support mandatory limits on the emissions many scientists believe contribute to climate change…

The group’s credibility as Christian activists, its outspoken environmental stance, and the controversies it’s causing within fundamentalist circles is showing that the “evangelical” movement is not the solidly Republican phenomenon many outsiders consider it to be, said Carl Raschke, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Denver.

“When movements become mainstream, they tend to fracture,” he said…

Brownback noted that the U.S. government already spends billions on climate-change-related activities. He supports more funding for nuclear energy, along with greater reliance on clean electricity and biofuels to slow harmful emissions.

But more radical changes should be handled with care, he said, because they “may have real consequences on our economy.”

The last sentence should read, “I am going to try and ignore these people because my largest campaign contributor of campaign funds is Koch Industries, a notorious pollutor.”

This push by some evangelicals will be an interesting dynamic in GOP politics. Senator Brownback is not the only Christian Conservative who also drinks from the cup of environmentally disastrous corporations. While the religious right provides the ground troops for a campaign, business interests bring in a large share of the money. Brownback will have to rebuff these evangelicals who are concerned about climate change because his fundraising depends on groups like Koch Industries. Brownback has always been cozy with the Cato Institute (also bankrolled by Koch) and they argue for complete environmental deregulation. No way will Brownback cross them.
Stem Cell research is also a wedge issue between business and religious conservatives. Pharmaceutical companies want the ability to create drugs that could be highly profitable and are not interested in government intrusion into private sector research. This fight is one of the current headlines in Missouri politics.

In a sense, this will show where Senator Brownback’s true loyalty lies. He could surprise me, rebuff Koch and his other big contributors, and join this growing evangelical movement. I doubt it.