Does this mean we're going to be shut down in favor of a candy robot blog?
That said, I guess I'll kick this thing off with a rather weighty topic. I recently read Noam Scheiber's article in The New Republic on Sam Brownback, Kansas senator, and his possible chances of winning the Republican nomination for president. The article's pretty long, so I'm only going to list a couple of quotes.
First, we have the good old "Poisoning the Well":
For the most part, though, it's not the continuity between the young Brownback and today's Brownback that is striking: It's the change. Because the longer Brownback goes on, the more you sense a distinct lack of passion for standard Iowa fare like agriculture policy or the budget. Compared with the previous speaker, local Congressman Steve King, he's not even worked up about Iraq. What Sam Brownback clearly wants to talk about--what he thinks people need to know about--are the issues you might store in a mental file called "Judgment Day." The Judgment Day file begins with standard culture-war causes like gay marriage and abortion. But it is a sprawling file, and, before long, it sprawls to such far-flung locales as Sudan and the Congo, where Brownback wants to stop genocide and human trafficking. "We're a great nation," Brownback says. His voice is still composed, but now there's a firmness that wasn't there before. "And I believe, in my heart, that for our greatness to continue, our goodness must continue.
I should make clear that this phrase "Judgment Day file" comes neither from Brownback nor his supporters. It is solely the creation of Scheiber. As we later learn, Brownback is a convert to Catholicism, so the whole End Times spiel doesn't really apply to him anymore. Why does Scheiber feel the need to paint him with the extreme Evangelical brush? So it would appear that Brownback is being condemned for taking his religion seriously and then applying that religion not only to the bugaboos of liberal America (abortion and gay marriage) but even to issues which I would assume deserve support from either side of the aisle: putting an end to genocide and human trafficking.
Another dandy:
Brownback's conversion the following year made him both a Catholic and a member of the rarefied flock of John McCloskey, priest to Washington's conservative establishment. McCloskey had previously converted conservative journalists Bob Novak and Larry Kudlow, and Brownback's "sponsor" was his fellow senator, Santorum. As with most secret societies, the accounts of Brownback's admission to this circle are remarkably thin. No one describes it as much more than a "quiet ceremony" officiated by McCloskey in a K Street chapel.
I like the quotes around sponsor. Is Scheiber not aware that it's a religious term? And if he is, couldn't he explain it to those who don't know it? By leaving it alone, he makes it seem shady and cultish, which, of course, is the whole point of this portion. I like the final two sentences too. I would assume that it was Mass which McCloskey presided over, in which Brownback received the Eucharist for the first time. Scary stuff, I tell you.
Finally, Scheiber once again manages to turn a rather liberal position on Brownback's part into a condemnation:
Then there is the immigration issue, which is either a colossal political miscalculation or the policy equivalent of Catholic self-flagellation. In 2005, Brownback signed on as a co-sponsor to the relatively moderate Kennedy-McCain bill. The reaction from rank-and-file Republicans has not been kind. Steve Scheffler, the head of a conservative evangelical group in Iowa, told me, "The biggest thing [Brownback would] have to address is why did he vote for that horrendous bill?" Kensinger says Brownback's answer is simple: "The Bible says you will be judged by how you treat the widow, the orphan, the foreign among you. That's the end of it." He believes the key is how Brownback manages his position--not the position itself. But Chuck Hurley, a Brownback law school classmate who runs the influential Iowa Family Policy Center, has hinted a shift could be in the works. "I understand he's been doing some consulting about that issue," Hurley told me conspiratorially, citing an upcoming meeting with a local anti-immigration politician.
So what he have here is yet another liberal who just doesn't get religion. Need I say that this isn't tremendously helpful for the Democratic Party? Does Scheiber not know any religious people who could look over his article for him. Reading between the lines, I've found a new respect for Brownback, whom I didn't really know a lot about before. He seems like an independent minded, committed conservative who takes his faith seriously, with nary a skeleton in his closet (since I'm sure Scheiber would have mentioned any of those).
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