Can Brownback lead a movement?

In a commentary in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, journalist Ross Douthat suggested that religious conservatives should embrace the label “theoconservatives,” and he pointed to Kansas’ senior senator as among a new generation of more articulate, less polarizing leaders who can help transform the nation. The movement needs “More Sam Brownbacks, for instance, whose vision encompasses Third World poverty, prostitution and prison reform without sacrificing any urgency on issues of life and death — and fewer Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells, jowly bigots who seem to think that shaking their fists at America is the best way to persuade it to repent. More artists like Mel Gibson or investors like Philip Anschutz, the Christian billionaire behind ‘The Chronicles of Narnia,’ who are comfortable advancing religious ideas within the confines of the cultural mainstream, and fewer culture warriors who sneer at Hollywood and then churn out dreck like ‘The Omega Code.’ ”
Posted by Rhonda Holman

7 Comments

  1. RustyFord
    Posted April 7, 2006 at 12:18 am | Permalink

    Brownback lead a movement? He can’t even run a Washington office without confusion!Honestly, name one bill he has authored that has benefitted the people of Kansas, or for that matter, name one bill that he has authored that has wide ranging, bipartisan support.

  2. CF
    Posted April 7, 2006 at 12:22 am | Permalink

    RustyFord, indeed.

    So, the WSJ thinks that what are needed are more stealth Theocrats? Big surprise there. Where Brownback leads, don’t expect the middle to follow. Too bossy, too creepy.

  3. writerdog
    Posted April 7, 2006 at 2:48 am | Permalink

    You know it makes one wonder? What is it we are missing when it comes to Brownback? It seem quite a few see more in him then we do.Nice guy I am sure and of all our people from Kansas in Washington he seem to be the most honest. Though I always been leary of those that tot they Christianity like some how their belief in Christ makes them better then others. More honest some how, for those that do not know…Christians are really just people! Subject to the same faults and weakness as everyone else. I know! And after the damage that the religious right has done I am even more leary of a politican that tots his faith.

  4. Ian Santiago
    Posted April 7, 2006 at 10:28 am | Permalink

    The guy is an apostate Vatican II catholic and not a true Christian at all. In fact, senator yellowback is just another errand boy for the globalists/zionists and he couldn’t inspire me to follow him to the seven eleven to buy a damned six pack!

    Viva La Raza Blanco!!

  5. steve
    Posted April 7, 2006 at 12:48 pm | Permalink

    Can Brownback lead a movement? Maybe a bowel movement!

  6. mrcontroversy
    Posted April 8, 2006 at 7:26 am | Permalink

    Rusty,Sounds like you’ve had dealings with Brownback’s staff, too.I can’t figure out whether he pays them to do one thing while he says another, or they just conveniently ignore him and do their own thing in his name.

  7. flike
    Posted April 10, 2006 at 11:19 am | Permalink

    Any Kansan interested in moderates or the moderate middle owes it to him- or herself to read Douthat’s commentary.

    If you think you have to hold your nose to read the WSJ, then that’s ok because you’re not a moderate anyway.

    Douthat’s perhaps largest point, one with which I agree, is that those on the Left will either engage the Theocrats in debate, engage their ideas, or lose power. That’s because the “theocrats” have now garnered enough political power to dodge being marginalized by the Left (and the Right, if the theocrats choose this).

    Even though yall try like heck to marginalize the devil out of them, lord knows. By the way, for what it’s worth, I am not at all religious, but I am a Realist.

    $0.02