As you’ve no doubt heard, Sam Brownback is bowing out. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it — too far behind the front-runners, unable to come up with the cash. So of course he must go.
But as we urge him not to let the doorknob hit him in the posterior on his way out, think about this: There goes a guy who, if we went by the kind of candidate S.C. Republicans act like they want, should be someone they would like better than the stars who are still in it:
- Brownback beats Rudy on moral and cultural issues.
- He was always the kind of conservative Romney recently started impersonating.
- He’s thought the issues through a lot better than Fred.
And while I think McCain’s right about the surge, at least Brownback had a clear plan for what should happen next, something that no one in either party, outside of Joe Biden, could say.
So how come South Carolinians and other voters won’t get a chance to choose Brownback if they were so inclined? Because the TV networks decided long ago who was in, and who is out. And there’s a disturbing truth in politics that I have yet to fully understand — voters answer pollsters by saying who they think is GOING to win (generally based on what the herd is telling them to think), rather than who they think SHOULD win. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not in their own interests. But they do it anyway.
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Brownback’s out because he was unable to convince anyone he would be an effective President. It’s that simple.
How does Ron Paul overcome the lack of media attention to get more money than many of the other candidates? How did Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton actually become President. They came out of nowhere. It’s some mystical combination of being in the right place at the right time, having a certain message that resonates, having a certain level of pure ego that drives one to exude that confidence that people latch onto…
or you just wait til your father becomes President and live off his name and hard work.
Brownback is boring. He’s Huckabee without a sense of humor. He’s McCain without a Purple Heart. He’s Thompson without a TV show. He’s not Rudy — in fact, he’s the anti-Rudy and made it clear when dropping out that he didn’t think Rudy could get the nomination with his pro-choice record.
The run for President is a combination beauty pageant, quiz show, advertising campaign, Ponzi scheme, and used car dealership. It’s about hooking people in
with the right words and then getting them to open their wallets. It’s bait-and-switch, shuck-and-jive, thrust-and-parry.
Brownback’s not up for that game.
Brad, I put this on the republicans and not the media. It has been made very clear that Rudy has liberal views and Brownback is a social conservative. Members of the values party put aside their values rhetoric when it comes to power and winning. After all, how could the “liberal media” sway the republicans?
Look at the actions of talking heads for the values party: Coulter viciously attacks 911 wives and denegrates Jews while Rush mimicks both a person with Parkinson’s and a 12 year old boy with a paralyzed vocal cord. The GOP hardly make a peep. Had it been Moveon.org disparaging these people and we’d have resolutions and press conferences daily to denounce them.
As Greenspan astutely observed, “the GOP has lost it’s way.”