Wichitopekington

Referencing the hometown team will almost always buy a political candidate some applause — after all, even if the crowd isn’t excited about the candidate, most people stand behind the team. The flip side to that is if you mention the competition.

Over the weekend, Sen. Sam Brownback dropped the Peyton Manning bomb in Brett Favre country. The crowd let him know, according to an Associated Press story that several news websites picked up this weekend. After he realized his analogy flopped, he backtracked. “That’s really bad,” he said. “That will go down in history. I apologize.”

“Let’s take Favre then,” Brownback said later. “The Packers are great. I’m sorry. How many passes does he complete without a line?”

“All of them!” more than one person yelled from the back of the room.

One way to gauge a candidate’s impact at a debate like the Republican presidential debate Thursday night is to see how many of their words made it into major news stories from outlets such as the Associated Press, USA Today, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

On this front, Sen. Sam Brownback did better than many in the crowded GOP field. The Kansan, who trails several candidates in polls and fundraising, was largely in the shadows in most national wire stories last night. But a Republican political consultant with Politico.com, which sponsored the debate, wrote that Brownback “had a particularly strong night. He talked with passion and elegance about the social issues that are the backbone of his candidacy.” Brownback also picked up some quick hits in an Associated Press story where he raised his hand to show he doesn’t believe in evolution and when he said the day the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade would be a “glorious day of human liberty and freedom.” McClatchy’s Washington Bureau quoted Brownback when he said he could support a more liberal GOP candidate. “Somebody who is with you 80 percent of the time is not your enemy,” Brownback said, citing Ronald Reagan’s philosophy.

Based on his comments to the Christian Science Monitor last week, he probably won’t worry about the coverage too much. When the newspaper asked him about debates, he said: “I think it’s important to get candidates side by side. I don’t think you make the candidacy or lose it over a debate or two, [but] I think they’re very helpful to have.”

See coverage of the Democrat’s debate last week.

See what Eagle readers had to say on WE Blog.

Sen. Sam Brownback, who opposed President Bush’s troop surge in Iraq, says “now is hardly the time to set a date for retreat.”

That comes just a day after he was campaigning in Iowa and told The Des Moines Register that his opposition to the surge is a problem for some conservative voters.

Brownback’s answer is to split Iraq three ways and lead the country into federalism. “If the surge works, federalism can provide the framework necessary to stabilize Iraq over the long term,” he said in a press release. “If the surge fails, and Iraq’s sectarian violence deepens, a federal Iraq will be the only choice available to separate the warring factions while keeping Iraq from breaking apart – something that we cannot allow to occur in such a vital region.”

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