What Happened When an Extremist, Christian Fundamentalist Got to Run a Whole State

[madokie]

Hint: nothing good.

Liberals throughout the land breathed a sigh of relief when Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas stepped down in 2008 and later decided to run for governor. Yes, the nation's gain was a loss for the good people of Kansas, but Brownback's special brand of right-wing fundamentalism was so extreme that many felt it was better to try to contain him in a single state rather than inflict him on the whole of the country. Judging from the four years he's been in charge of that unfortunate state, their concerns were well-founded.

This should come as no surprise. His tenure in the Senate was characterized by his righteous absolutism and entirely predictable ultra-conservative vote. There was no tax cut he did not back or military adventure he wasn't in favor of. He voted to impeach President Clinton and even took the unusual step of decrying the immorality of the American public for failing to be properly outraged. But it was in the realm of culture and religion where he made his mark.

Once a devout evangelical Protestant, Brownback converted to Catholicism later in life. (His chief of staff at the time was none other than Congressman Paul Ryan, who is credited with counseling him in his conversion.) In the Senate he took up the banner of the culture war, even chairing a Senate group called the Values Action Team which included such conservative activist groups as Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the National Right to Life Committee, where he and fellow right-wing senators plotted their strategy for taking America back to the Dark Ages. He was so doctrinaire he even refused to vote for a particular judicial candidate because she had once attended a lesbian commitment ceremony. (She didn't officiate or participate; she merely attended.) For the two terms he served in the Senate he was a ferocious culture warrior.

But he wasn't always so intensely focused on the decadence and moral dissipation of modern American life. When he first ran for congress in the mid-'90s he was considered a moderate Kansas Republican like Eisenhower. But a tough campaign against an opponent backed by well-organized right-to-life zealots converted him to an evangelical culture warrior and Republican revolutionary so committed to cutting taxes and shrinking government one profiler said he even gave Newt Gingrich "the willies."

http://www.alternet.org/what-happened-when-extremist-christian-fundamentalist-got-run-whole-state

[msongs]

1. what happened? people who voted for him got what they voted for nt

[dembotoz]

2. interesting tha paul ryan was his chief of staff

puts ryans anti poverty proposal in a whole new light
that bastard