« Previous Entry | Main | Next Entry »

Posted: July 6, 2007 5:42 PM
Brownback Releases Book, Takes Shots at Romney and Tancredo
Email This

Like several presidential candidates, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., spent the early part of the week campaigning in Iowa and participating in a handful of Independence Day parades. He toured energy and cement plants, a couple of small businesses and ate some BBQ at a picnic.

Team Brownback also announced that the campaign had raised $1.5 million in the last three months. While the amount pales in comparison to the front-runners, it’s about $200,000 more than his campaign raised in the previous quarter. The new total, however, mostly is from money raised before Brownback’s tumultuous week dealing with the immigration issue.

Brownback also marked the release of his book, “From Power to Purpose: A Remarkable Journey of Faith and Compassion,” by signing copies at various events. The book highlights Brownback’s embracing of Christianity and reveals that after going through marital problems and a bout with cancer in the mid-’90s Brownback devoted himself to his faith.

In the book, Brownback also wrote that he had a “hatred” of Bill and Hillary Clinton until his religious awakening. He wrote about personally apologizing to Hillary Clinton about this hatred at a prayer breakfast. “I don’t know what she thought, but I believe it made a difference,” he said.

Thus far, the senator’s 240-pager trails other candidates’ works in Amazon rankings, although none of the books appears likely to threaten JK Rowling’s upcoming Harry Potter novel for the top spot on the list. Brownback’s “From Power to Purpose” ranks 104,222 among books, compared with the rankings of New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson’s “Between Worlds” at 94,655 and Sen. Barack Obama’s “Dreams of My Father” at 4,596.

Leading up to the July 4 festivities, Team Brownback took aim at fellow Republican candidates Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

On July 2, Tancredo was the target with a press release titled “Tancredo Accepts Thousands from Founder of Planned Parenthood Network.” The memo said the Tancredo campaign accepted thousands of dollars from John Tanton, a former president of the Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood Association and chairman of the Great Lakes Public Affairs Committee of Planned Parenthood.

The next day, Romney’s stance on gun ownership rights was the subject of a press release titled “Mitt Romney’s Record on Gun Rights: Political Opportunism, Pandering and Flip-Flopping.” The release lists 10 statements by Romney it considered contradictory and shows an image of a sandal, a “Mitt Flop”.

The Denver Post’s Karen E. Crummy covers fake blogs with her story, “Online Spoofs Cloud Political Stances.” At least two of these Web sites are devoted to Brownback’s campaign.

Crummy writes: “[I]f you peruse some of the blogs supposedly authored by [Brownback] supporters, such as baptistsforbrownback, you’ll see that he believes in lots of other things too. Like that the Earth is flat — and does not revolve around the sun. … It appears these so-called supporters — who also run the site Blogs 4 Brownback — are really using the sites to parody the senator’s conservative political and religious beliefs, and perhaps make it appear that he is aligned with people who hold some, well, extraordinary notions.”

Apparently, some people are confused by the blogs and think they’re real. In recent postings, the authors insist that the blogs are not spoofs and also attack Crummy — and link to her story.

What’s definitely not a hoax? The campaign saying that Brownback will again be in Iowa next week.