Reject Brownback's Endorsement

There is a man who believes the presidency is “about serving one constituent,” — God — according to Rolling Stone. He prays in a close-knit, secretive cell. And he believes that America condones murder; he believes we celebrate a culture of death.

This man is Sen. Sam Brownback (R - Kan.) and, until recently, he was running for president.

Although his campaign flopped, Brownback has anointed Sen. John McCain (R – Ariz.) as God-friendly and worthy of evangelical votes. I lament this failing of McCain’s once-laudable integrity — in 2000, chugging toward failure aboard the Straight Talk Express, McCain referred to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance,” and blasted the “evil influence that they exercise over the Republican party.”

That evil influence has not faded, Mr. McCain. It has only festered in its lonely decline, shuddering at the progress of a tolerant and enlightened America. And Sam Brownback is one of its greatest champions.

For months I indulged a twisted curiosity in the Brownback campaign, despite the icky feeling I get when reading about him. His creepiness oozes from my computer screen in pink-speckled globules and seeps into my head, where it finds my mental image of Brownback and spits up a red letter "C" on the right breast pocket of his well-tailored suit.

He might deserve that C-for-creepiness: Brownback apparently associates with the seedy underbelly of the Internet.

In a WorldNetDaily column republished by GrassTopsUSA.com in July, Janet Folger implied that America is going the way of godless Haiti because a Hindu prayer was allowed on the Senate floor. According to Folger, Haiti became the “very poorest nation in the world” because it was “dedicated to Satan.”

“Like honoring a golden calf for our deliverance, last Thursday, I stood in horror watching the state-sanctioned [Hindu] prayer to false gods on the floor of the United States Senate,” writes Folger.

Would you expect a U.S. senator and one-time presidential candidate to associate with this sort of blithering stupidity?

Well, there was a direct financial link between the operators of GrassTopsUSA.com and the Brownback presidential campaign. Brownback doesn’t seem to mind a midnight cruise into this sleazy truck stop of the information superhighway.

In its quarterly Federal Election Commission filing for July, Brownback for President reports paying C4Strategies Inc. $3,791.51 for “blast e-mails.” The April quarterly report shows two disbursements to C4Strategies, of $4,092.97 and $969.42.

The C4Strategies.com domain name is registered to Christine Carmouche, wife of Christopher Carmouche, who operated the now-defunct site LaptopLobbyists.com. Before crumbling in a cyber war with blogger NormalBobSmith that destroyed the site’s Google ranking, LaptopLobbyists.com provided political spamming services: If you paid $20, they'd put your name on their own form letter and send it to a long list of politicians.

Surprisingly enough, these keen political strategists are the brainpower behind GrassTopsUSA.com: Christopher Carmouche is the executive director and his wife Christine is president. GrassTopsUSA, which claims to be a 501(c)4 non-profit, publishes ridiculous, child-like right-wing rants fraught with grammatical errors, as we’ve seen. The site also sells “blast faxes” containing utterly bizarre messages, such as “the gay rights movement has declared war on society itself.” In a message opposing a bill that would ban employment discrimination against gays, GrassTopsUSA claimed the law would “turn America into freak show, a sexual zoo teeming with nauseating behavior.”

Another GrasstopsUSA column, this one published in August, “take[s] a step back and evaluate[s] whether electing a woman for president is a wise decision.” To do this, columnist Rosemary Scheetz analyzes the female vice president in Air Force One — yes, the 1997 action film starring President Harrison Ford. “While in power she fell apart, she was too emotional to make a rational decision,” writes Scheetz.

What does this film teach us about real women?

“I believe that in many cases this is the proper portrayal of how a woman would react in a similar situation,” writes Scheetz. “Women by nature are more emotional, and in a position of such high authority, we want reason, not emotion to rule! A woman’s nature is good and beautiful, but it does not necessarily transfer well to running a country.”

I don't know if Brownback is aware of the connection between C4Strategies and GrassTopsUSA. But I do know that he trusted almost $9,000 in campaign funds to the same people who vomit and spew GrassTopsUSA onto the Internet. Nobody who associates with this fiery and vile religiosity deserves to represent the American people – or Kansans, for that matter. And I find it disheartening that John McCain, once so fiercely independent, desired the endorsement of a man like Sam Brownback.

The Christian far-right needs to be dismantled. When a candidate for president purports to represent one constituent — God — rather than the American people, democracy is threatened in a very real sense. A government that claims to derive authority from God cannot be a democracy.

Nor can a government that claims a divine mandate be sane. Men like Sam Brownback and his Internet pals justify their pathological lack of empathy with scripture: It’s okay to
condemn homosexuals or discriminate against women, because that’s what the Bible says to do. If the Christian far-right intends to use religion to shield itself from reality, to extricate itself from humanity — well, then voters need to remove its influence from our political system. Brownback’s dismal performance and early drop-out is a good start.

But McCain’s eagerness to accept a Brownback endorsement demonstrates the Christian far-right’s continuing stranglehold on the GOP nomination process. For years I considered McCain one of the few Republicans that I would vote for — although I rarely agree with him, his gutsy and straightforward politics were refreshing. I trusted him. Now it’s clear that he’s traded guts for votes and personal integrity for the evil influences bubbling at the darkest depths of his party.