CNN: Brownback has taken the first step toward launching a 2008 presidential bid

[sabra]

http://www.cnn.com/

News Alert >> Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansan, has taken the first step toward launching a 2008 presidential bid, The Associated Press reports.

[jgraz]

1. oh please run sammy, pleeeeeeaaaase!

:rofl:

[AndyTiedye]

22. Be Careful What You Wish For

Many were saying the same thing about W back in '99-'00.

Any Republican nominee for President, however inept and insane, has a pretty good chance of getting (s)elected.

[FiveGoodMen]

29. Yeah, but they're going to run somebody.

We can only hope they don't choose well.

[AndyTiedye]

32. I Always Hope The Repubs Run Some Who Won't Be a Total Disaster if they "Win"

Because no matter how lame their candidates are, by hook and by crook,
the Repiglicans have "won" 2 out of every 3 Presidential elections in my lifetime.

[LeftishBrit]

37. Me too!

All the world needs is a Taliban type in charge of the world's biggest collection of WMD.

Brownback is bloody scary!

[hippiechick]

2. "President Brokeback"? Somehow I just don't think so ...

:rofl: :evilgrin: :rofl:

[Maddy McCall]

4. Even "brownback" comes with funny images.

:D

[Ian David]

9. Brownback Mountain, anyone? n/t

[SKKY]

26. The Skits on Saturday Night Live would be priceless though. PRICELESS!!!!!

[Ignacio Upton]

41. What if we end up with Brownback vs. Vilsack?

That would sound like the title to a gay porn video..:rofl:

[SharonAnn]

42. The Daily Show last night had a duck pop up and say "Brownback!"

It was funny. In the same type of "voice" as "AFLAC!"

[Raiden]

3. Yes!!!!

Let's all donate money to Bareback's campaign! :rofl:

[mcscajun]

5. Sam WHO?

I had to look this guy up. Predictably, the article I found said "He has little name recognition outside his home state." DUH!

He favors teaching intelligent design along with evolution; I now know all I need to know about Sen. Brownback. My sympathies go out to our Kansan DUers for having this man represent them.

[SharonAnn]

43. Tom Monaghan (Domino's Founder and R-W Catholic) is now on his campaign committee.

Very, very scary.

Monaghan's virulently anti-choice, believes the Roman Catholic Church is too liberal, supports Opus Dei, is building a religious community near Naples Florida (Ave Maria). Very, very scary.

I was raised Roman Catholic, much of my family still is conservative RC and they find thse people frightening.

Takes one to know one? I don't know. The vision of life in "The Handmaid's Tale" would fit in their version of a correct society.

[Gunit_Sangh]

6. re: sam who

Don't you remember this was the guy who channeled the thoughts of blastocysts who didn't want to be murdered for stem cell research.

[atommom]

7. Here is the real Sam. He is extremely right wing, and potentially dangerous.

Nobody in this little church just off Times Square in Manhattan thinks of themselves as political. They're spiritual -- actors and athletes and pretty young things who believe that every word of the Bible is inerrant dictation from God. They look down from the balcony of the Morning Star, swaying and smiling at the screen that tells them how to sing along. Nail-pierced hands, a wounded side. This is love, this is love! But on this evening in January, politics and all its worldly machinations have entered their church. Sitting in the darkness of the front row is Sam Brownback, the Republican senator from Kansas. And hunched over on the stage in a red leather chair is an old man named Harald Bredesen, who has come to anoint Brownback as the Christian right's next candidate for president.

Over the last six decades, Bredesen has prayed with so many presidents and prime ministers and kings that he can barely remember their names. He's the spiritual father of Pat Robertson, the man behind the preacher's vast media empire. He was one of three pastors who laid hands on Ronald Reagan in 1970 and heard the Pasadena Prophecy: the moment when God told Reagan that he would one day occupy the White House. And he recently dispatched one of his proteges to remind George W. Bush of the divine will -- and evangelical power -- behind his presidency.

"I am a seeker," he says. Brownback believes that every spiritual path has its own unique scent, and he wants to inhale them all. When he ran for the House he was a Methodist. By the time he ran for the Senate he was an evangelical. Now he has become a Catholic. He was baptized not in a church but in a chapel tucked between lobbyists' offices on K Street that is run by Opus Dei, the secretive lay order founded by a Catholic priest who advocated "holy coercion" and considered Spanish dictator Francisco Franco an ideal of worldly power. Brownback also studies Torah with an orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn. "Deep," says the rabbi, Nosson Scherman. Lately, Brownback has been reading the Koran, but he doesn't like what he's finding. "There's some difficult material in it with regard to the Christian and the Jew," he tells a Christian radio program, voice husky with regret.

Brownback is not part of the GOP leadership, and he doesn't want to be. He once told a group of businessmen he wanted to be the next Jesse Helms -- "Senator No," who operated as a one-man demolition unit against godlessness, independent of his party. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a man with presidential ambitions of his own, gave Brownback a plum position on the Judiciary Committee, perhaps hoping that Brownback would provide a counterbalance to Arlen Specter, a moderate Republican who threatened to make trouble for Bush's appointees. Instead, taking a page from Helms, Brownback turned the position into a platform for a high-profile war against gay marriage, porn and abortion. Casting Bush and the Republican leadership as soft and muddled, he regularly turns sleepy hearings into platforms for his vision of America, inviting a parade of angry witnesses to denounce the "homosexual agenda," "bestiality" and "murder."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/9178374/gods_senator

[xxqqqzme]

12. I read that Rolling Stone article.

It filled me w/ the same dread that an article on tom delay had years earlier.

[atommom]

24. Same here. I'd like to say he's too loony to have a chance,

but in any rational world he would never have made it as far as he already has.

[AndyTiedye]

39. In Any Rational World This Man Would Be in the Big House Not the White House

[atommom]

40. You got that right. It pains me to look at him. nt

[The Stranger]

13. Opus Dei.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

27. oh dear. that would do anyone in, if Americans only read more.

Opus Dei are scary. Knew a family of them, until my religious and political views came out. They banned their kids from seeing me, especially a rather attractive member of the opposite sex. Once I learned more about OD, I didn't feel anything but lucky - in a whole different sort of way.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mongo]

11. LOL!

Contact form for Brownback if you want to let HIM know how you feel

http://brownback.senate.gov/CMEmailMe.cfm

[JNelson6563]

10. Ah, so Brownshirt's runnin' eh?

This will be lots of fun! :toast:

Julie

[MidwestTransplant]

14. He claims to be another Reagan. Could he really be that aloof?

[MidwestTransplant]

15. He claims to be another Reagan. Could he really be that aloof?

[pnwmom]

18. Reagan wasn't a religous nut.

There. I've actually said something good about him. Must be the first time, too.

[HughBeaumont]

16. He'd get 35% of the vote, AT BEST.

We had a nutjob in the Blight House for eight years. No more nut jobs. Run someone normal. Or don't. Up to you.

[Gemini Cat]

20. 35% maybe.

That's what I thought about the current nut job years ago. I was wrong. I can't make the mistake of underestimating the stupidity of the people and the hackable voting machines.

[HughBeaumont]

21. Brownshirt doesn't have the luxury of a Bush last name.

Nor does he have the luxury of being in the BFEE/Corporations/Big Oil pockets.

The Democratic congressional victory is evidence America is finally waking up from this nightmare and saying "enough!" Republicans are going to try and win the center and running a polarizing religious right wack-a-doo like Brownback isn't the strategy they're going to try.

See, Bush wasn't SO MUCH of a religious nutjob initially. He ran as a right-leaning moderate and middle America bought the ruse (while we all hung our heads in shame), but by the time they knew better, it was too late. We KNOW what Brownback is already.

[long_green]

45. For all of "Snowflake Sam's" looniness

his biggest advantage is being the favorite senator of the very rich, very right-wing Koch family of Kansas. He won't lack for early money.

[pnwmom]

17. Gag me with a spoon.

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[knight_of_the_star]

19. Easy Prey

All we have to do if he wins the nom is run someone sane and he'll get clobbered.

[yurbud]

23. isn't he one of the certifiable loons?

[KamaAina]

25. I can't wait for him to introduce his running mate...

...the Talking Embryo! :rofl:

[sarcasmo]

28. He might just name Jesus his running mate.

[nevergiveup]

30. Sam's the Man

:rofl:

[fujiyama]

31. He's one of the craziest religious fanatics in congress

He's the equivalent of the '88 (or was it '92?) Pat Robertson run.

Unfortunately, I think these theocrats have gained more power since then and mobilize their voters better.

On the upside, there's no way he can pull the same "Bush as a moderate" BS shtick as in '00, though who knows what they can pull with the media in their pocket.

[aka-chmeee]

33. Blue Kansan's Burden

While it would perhaps be nice to have other shoulders to share the burden of ol' Sam Brown-in-the-shorts, If the choice is between having the freak isolated here in Kansas or occupying the White House, I'll be happy to bear the load with my fellow Kansans and spare the rest of you.

[sofa king]

34. Bumper stickers already spotted:

[Disturbed]

35. Brownback's Voting Record

http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Sam_Brownback.htm

I hope he is the Rethug Candidate.

[SoCalDem]

36. New headline? "...Taken the first step in LOSING the 2008 election..."..n/y

[Red1]

38. Idiot

I sent his website a msg, put a whippin on the boy,
figure his "exploratory committee" will use that database
to profile the guy.

Look for brownback to distance himself from the rightwinger
religious fanatic image.

[Merrick]

44. Now if only the majority of the other 299 million people in this country

were as retarded as the majority of people from Kansas are, apparently.