Posted on 03/04/2009 11:55:34 AM PST by presidio9
After a day of uncertainty, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said Tuesday he would vote to confirm Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for secretary of health and human services.
“The president won the election and has nominated a Kansan to the Cabinet,” Brownback said in a statement. “Despite our profound policy differences, I will support my fellow Kansan.”
Brownback joined Sen. Pat Roberts, who also made his intentions known Tuesday.
Earlier Tuesday, Brownback had deferred. “He doesn’t plan to say anything either way at this point,” said a spokesman.
Some questioned how Brownback would decide, considering how abortion opponents — who have long seen Sebelius as unacceptable — are a major part of his base.
Brownback’s position had been a concern to the White House. Two sources have told The Kansas City Star that President Barack Obama himself called Brownback last week to gauge his reaction. The president wanted to be sure that Brownback wouldn’t work to derail the nomination, a top Democrat said.
Unlike Roberts, Brownback was not at the White House ceremony Monday and seemed to be wavering.
“He’s between a rock and a hard place,” Kansas State University political scientist Joe Aistrup said before Brownback issued his Tuesday statement.
Ron Thornburgh, the four-term secretary of state running against Brownback next year for the GOP nomination for governor, had ripped Brownback for “backpedaling” from a joint statement issued Saturday with Roberts that said:
“We are hopeful Governor Sebelius will be a voice for Kansas and rural America at the department. We look forward to working with her on issues important to the state…”
Thornburgh called the weekend statement tantamount to an endorsement: “I’m stunned that Sam would endorse her because she’s an individual who goes against everything he has said he believes in
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
Are you serious? How do we "marry" anyone we oppose to Sebelius when one of our supposed strongest abortion opponents supported for selfish political reasons.
ALL believes that any “time line” ban is immoral and a “compromise”.
Since “partial birth abortions” could be done, theoretically, without regard to gestation, ALL will support a ban on partial birth abortions.
However, ALL, Operation Rescue and Right to Life of Kansas are partially responsible for George Tiller, as they will not allow a ban of late term abortions.
It would be entirely possible to pass such a ban, in the legislature, with a good chance of it holding up, Constitutionally, if done right.
Also, a RESOLUTION in Congress, was once proposed by Senator Orin Hatch. A simple majority vote could have made abortion illegal except for rape, incest and life of the mother.
ALL opposed that, since it did not “save all the babies”!
Also, late term bans have been brought up, in Congress, and Judie Brown and ALL would not support them, because they would not “Save All the Babies”.
You need to get your facts and history straight.
National Right to Life supports late term bans.
ALL does not. ALL, therefore, enables TILLER!
And she won't do any damage pulling out the feeding tubes of the elderly under nationalized medicine? Right.
I want my political candidates to do what it takes to get elected.
I want them to win.
Ambition is good.
The Republic continues to crumble.
Once again, principles are watered down.
This time in bleeding Kansas.
RINO
Do not sacrifice our own people for political show.
Get our people promoted, up the ladder, where they can exercise real power.
Do not do stupid things that will hurt political viability.
The cost, to Brownback, of opposing Sebelius would be high.
The cost, to the prolife movement, of Brownback fighting this nomination is non existent.
The benefit, to the prolife movement, of getting Sebelius out of Kansas is HUGE!
This is a good thing.
“The cost, to the prolife movement, of Brownback fighting this nomination is non existent.”
Sorry, meant to say the cost of Brownback NOT fighting this nomination is non existent.
The ends do not justify the means.
You have to decide which, of your own troops, to send into harms way.
It is not wrong to have a strategy for victory.
It is wrong to be a poor steward of the political capital that we have. It is wrong to waste energy on battles we can not win, when nothing positive will come from that battle.
Brownback believes that elections have consequences and that Obama should be given broad latitude in his appointments. This is the same believe that Republicans pushed on Democrats, during the Reagan, Bush I and W. Administrations.
What positive outcome could there be, for Brownback to bash Sebelius, at this point? Absolutely none!
You expect our politicians to do stupid things, based on vague “principle” that could cost an election, while gaining nothing in return?
Which is it?
Do the people of Kansas care about abortion or don’t they?
If they do, then polls suggest that opposing Sebelius on that basis for HHS is the right call, because people who care break in favour of life.
If they don’t care, then Brownback should oppose Sebelius simply for being a ghoul who enjoys the prospect of babies having their brains sucked out of their skulls.
Where, exactly, is the downside for opposing Sebelius?
The cost, on the other hand, is Brownback’s inability to coherently oppose any policy formulated by Sebelius in keeping with her pro-death advocacy in Kansas, since, after all, Brownback is now declaring that knowing her he still thinks she’s a good candidate for the job.
Phil Kline just lost, a couple of years ago, and he was a sitting Attorney General who did great prolife work, but he was painted as a prolife “radical” and it stuck.
If done the right way, the people will support abortion restrictions, but the people do not want “single issue” politicians, they do not want people who seem obsessed with the issue.
We live in a REPUBLIC, not a Democracy. The public does not vote on issues, they vote for candidates who vote on issues.
And, again, try to understand what the polls really mean. In fact, the majority would like the issue to just go away, and the majority does NOT vote based on the abortion issue alone.
The prolife issue is an advantage, for our Prolife politicians, as long as they do not blow it by allowing themselves to be painted as one issue ideologues, as happened to Phil Kline. (I am a strong Kline supporter, btw, I just do not want to see what happened to Kline happen to another good Kansas Prolife Republican!)
You are an armchair quarterback that has never figured out how to win.
Please don’t start by insulting my literacy if you want to persuade me.
Sebelius’ nomination WAS a single-issue nomination—if people want to get upset about abortion being injected into the issue, they need to come to grips with the fact that abortion was the sole reason Sebelius got the job—she was the second choice, bear in mind.
Why e-mail that traitor? The blood of innocents will now be on his hands also.
Dang, getting late I guess, sorry.
But the problem will be that she can always show the picture of “good friend” Sam Brownback shaking her hand upon her swearing in.
Or will he disown her over the conscience clause, pretending shock that these “profound disagreements” included baby-killing all along?
I don’t see how he needed to be her champion, at all. Or, more precisely, I don’t see how a single baby will be spared by this, or the pro-life cause measurably advanced in any way. Brownback could have just said he was studying the matter and left it there. His pained “no” vote could have been as quiet or as dramatic as he thought politically necessary.
Rebuke of sinners that moves them to repent is a spiritual work of mercy.
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