Brownback 08, The End
Written by Mark Harris on June 26th, 2007Well I think we just saw what is essentially the end for the Brownback campaign and their longshot hopes. By voting for cloture on the shamnesty bill, he loses any leverage at all on the issue which is HUGE in the GOP primary in Iowa. Brownback has bet everything on Iowa and is struggling to get out of the low single digits. Fred!’s entry into the race was a body blow to his campaign, but this ends any real Brownback 08 rationale.
Its funny a few months ago I thought Brownback might climb his way from the third tier into the second tier, but it has turned out that Gov. Huckabee is the new second tier. We’ll wait to see the fundraising numbers this quarter but unless he has a tremendously above expectations haul I think the campaign is on life support at best.
26
PM
Brownback has been for this amnesty since day one. His vote is no surprise. As for his Presidential candidacy, he has also been a weak candidate since day one. He wasn’t going anywhere.
26
PM
Mark,
Didn’t the Mexican vote push Bush over the top in ‘04? Do your research. By looking like a bunch of racists, conservatives in the Republican Party are screwing themselves for decades with America’s fastest growing ethnicity.
26
PM
How exactly do we look like racists? By insisting on the law being followed? By wanting a law to not have hundreds of loopholes in it? What does this even have to do with race?
BTW, the typical hispanic voter who votes GOP is against this bill as well.
26
PM
The Mexican vote went against Bush, not for. It couldn’t possibly have put him over the top. If the country had gone the way Hispanics, or specifically Mexicans, had gone, Kerry would be president now. Not that there’s much of a difference between Kerry and Bush, anyway.
In any event, Bush’s percentage of the Hispanic vote in 2004 was overestimated; I think the figures came from the same exit polls that said Kerry was going to win the election. Furthermore, the GOP candidates for Senate and the House and other offices got a smaller share of the Hispanic vote even in the same year Bush was reelected, back when there was no noticeable difference between the GOP and the Democrats on immigration. Bush’s share of the Hispanic vote, not very large in and of itself, was still larger than the GOP as a whole got.
Hispanics simply will never vote Republican in large numbers, amnesty or no amnesty. They didn’t start voting Republican after the 1986 amnesty, and they won’t do it this time either. This isn’t because they think we’re racist; it’s because (as with blacks) they’re liberal on economic issues and they base their votes on those issues. Can you name one Hispanic country that doesn’t have a left-wing government? I can’t. Hispanics are natural Democrats; it’s just that simple.
28
AM
Brownback voted against cloture today. I don’t expect you to call him the greatest thing since sliced bread, but be fair and acknowledge that he did the right thing when it counted.
28
PM
Brownback only voted that way under intense pressure from his home state. He wanted to vote for cloture. The guy is a know commodity on this issue.
28
PM
Hang on, this guy is with us on just about everything else and is arguably the primary reason that we now have Justice Alito instead of Justice Miers. When push came to shove, he listened to his allies and constituents and did the right thing. I wish he had a different record on the issue, but can you seriously argue that Sam Brownback isn’t conservative enough for you? If there are five more conservative members of the United States Senate, it’s a lot. That’s painting yourself into a pretty small corner.
28
PM
I think you and I define conservatism slightly differently. I want to shrink the size of the federal government, fiscally and in terms of scope. Sam Brownback has shown little interest in doing that throughout his career. The guy is in the back pocket of the ag interests in his state (he was former Sec. of Ag for Kansas) and funnels billions of dollars in pork and aid to the corporations that farm Kansas and the ethanol refiners. He is a big-government, pro-illegal immigration, borrow and spend Republican. His stance on abortion is great, but that doesn’t make him a conservative, it makes him a decent human being.
28
PM
From Rightwingnews:
“Keep in mind that John Ensign, the head of the RNSC, voted for cloture when it counted — and he let people know his decision before the vote started. So, he didn’t just go with the flow once he saw the bill was going to lose, like Sam Brownback and some of the others.”
28
PM
Mike,
His leadership on the Miers issue included opposition to abortion, but it reflected his commitment on the larger scale to reigning in judicial activism. He is a cultural conservative writ large.
Having said that, I’m a Coburn conservative and am on board 100% when it comes to restoring the restraints that the Constitution placed on government. The Club for Growth, a leader in the fiscal part of the conservative movement, gives Brownback strong ratings on everything but spending. Citizens Against Government Waste, which deals specifically with that issue, rated him twentieth in the last Senate, two percentage points behind Sen. Jeff Sessions. Among the others ranked ahead of Brownback were Burr, Graham, Isakson, and McCain. I don’t mean to claim that such rankings are the be all and end all of members of Congress, but they are a fair overview. I won’t rave about his record on spending, but all things considered, it’s not that bad.
There aren’t many Coburns and Pauls, and I think it’s realistic that we can expect to fill Congress with them. If Sam Brownback isn’t conservative enough for you, how many Senators or Congressmen are?
29
AM
I’m assuming he meant voted against cloture when it counted.
And I think it’s pretty apparent that Brownback, McConnell, and others only voted the right way once they saw the writing on the wall and wanted to be on the winning side of the issue. Much like Hillary Clinton voting towards the end of the voting period against the troop supplemental bill, only after she saw that Obama had done so.
I mentioned to a friend on the phone today, that this victory happened not because Senators decided to suddenly follow principles, but because they like being in office and wanted to win their next election. While this is certainly not true for Sessions, Coburn, DeMint, Vitter, and others, it is telling that this bill actually got less than 50 votes for cloture when the struggle was to get less than 60.
Is it a good thing that many Senators only voted the right way because their constituents put a gun to their heads (including both of Georgia’s, Isakson and Chambliss, who were originally involved in the backroom dealings of this bill)? No, but it’s better than them being complete SOB’s and voting for this bill.
Several Senators voted the way they did because they feared the wrath of their constituents - which though not the best means desired, produced a better outcome. If only we could force such a loud, damning confrontation all over national airwaves for ridiculous appropriations spending and whatnot. But who knows, maybe this is a sign of more citizen involvement to come.
29
AM
Several Senators voted the way they did because they feared the wrath of their constituents - which though not the best means desired, produced a better outcome.
It means that Congress actually worked the way it was supposed to for once. We send our elected officials to Washington to represent us. Yes, they should be listening to their constituents! Yes, they should be scared that we’ll vote them out if they don’t represent us! Yes, we should always be as involved as people were over the immigration issue. If we were, I believe we’d see the overtax and overspend culture begin to dry up.
29
AM
I agree Holly. What Langley and I are saying is that it would be better if the politicians did what they said they were going to do when first elected and didn’t require threats and intimidation to do the right thing. The whole point of electing representatives instead of us having a direct democracy is to avoid episodes like this immigration bill where the mob rules. In this case I have no problem with the outcome because the mob forced their representatives in DC to keep their word. This was not one of the republic’s finer moments though. This was a case of the broken system almost grinding to a halt because the people’s will is almost totally irrelevant to the governance of this nation.
29
AM
I agree with you, Mike. I think that one of the biggest problems in DC is the disconnect between the elected officials and their constituents. I think that particular problem actually influences most of the other issues. That said, communication is vitally important, and of course the senators and representatives should be seeking to communicate with their constituents.
However, there’s a problem if the communication is coming off as a lecture, as was the initial case with Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss. It was like they were telling us what we should think and want. Well, that didn’t go over so well, so it was up to us as constituents to remind our guys that communication is not a lecture, it is a dialogue, and we are the ones who sent them to Washington - we can surely bring them back to Georgia in a heartbeat.
In the end, they got the message.
No, it wasn’t the prettiest process, but for what it’s worth, I’m glad it happened, and I’d like to see it happen on other issues where our guys and gals in DC are missing (or ignoring) the wishes of their voters. I think once they know that we’ll call them on what they’re doing and that we’re watching them closely, they’ll vote as they should a lot more often.
29
AM
Another point of electing representatives is so they can make hard decisions which they believe are right even though it might be unpopular.
People understand this and elect politicians who they trust to do so.
29
AM
“Another point of electing representatives is so they can make hard decisions which they believe are right even though it might be unpopular.”
That may be, but those men won’t be returning to office. The people run this nation, not wise leaders who have to make “hard decisions” that are not in the interest of the people they serve.