Desperate Kansas Governor Uses Anti-Marriage Equality Rally As A Campaign Event

Desperate Kansas Governor Uses Anti-Marriage Equality Rally As A Campaign Event

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback spoke at a Family Research Council rally against marriage equality Saturday, using the gathering as a get-out-the-vote effort for his stumbling campaign. 
Kansas governor Sam Brownback (he's the one with the flag in the photo above) has decided to go right. If you immediately thought, "how in the hell can that guy go any more right than he already is," I understand your skepticism.
Sam Brownback has used his term as a red state governor to put into practice all the conservative myths, like cutting taxes will result in more government revenue and more jobs, and trickle down will eventually float all boats. Turns out the Kansas "experiment" didn't work. The legislature's nonpartisan research staff predicts Brownback's polcies of reducing the state's top personal income tax rate by 26% and exempting the owners of 191,000 businesses from any income taxes at all, will result in a $260 million budget shortfall by July 2016. Governor Brownback has been campaigning on the promise that the reductions are boosting the economy, it's just too soon to see it.
The policies of Governor Brownback have resulted in a downgrade of the state's credit rating,cuts in education, and no healthcare for the uninsured people in his state. He has been such a disaster, more than 500 moderate Republicans have even announced their support for his Democratic opponent, Paul Davis.

"This election is not about electing a Democrat or a Republican," said Dick Bond, a Republican former Kansas Senate President who is supporting Davis. "It's about electing a moderate, common sense Kansan as governor."

Now, two weeks before the election, with the polls in a virtual tie, Governor Brownback appears to have given up on defending his conservative tax cut experiment and has settled on a new strategy. The marriage equality battle came to Kansas this week, and Governor Brownback thinks he can win by motivating Kansans opposed to same-sex marriage. So this weekend, he turned a Family Research Council rally against marriage equality into a get-out-the-vote effort for his own gubernatorial campaign.
The Wichita Eagle reports that Governor Brownback addressed a gathering of about one hundred people in the Summit Church parking lot Saturday morning, at the “Standing for the American Family and Traditional Marriage” rally organized by the Family Research Council, a well-known Washington-based conservative Christian organization that opposes same-sex marriage.

“The state of Kansas has voted on this, the people of Kansas have voted on this,” Brownback said. “We need to keep pushing those issues and keep surging! Surge forward into the election cycle.”

Governor Brownback unabashedly used the rally to motivate homophobic Kansans to vote:

“We need to push forward our candidates that stand for this country, that stand for faith, that stand for family, that stand for freedom. This faith, family, freedom, that’s the name of the bus,” Brownback said, motioning toward the Family Research Coucil bus. “It’s also the name of the basic American philosophy, guys. The motto of the nation remains, ‘In God we trust.’”

Governor Brownback's remarks did not go unchallenged. As he spoke, some dissenters in the sparse crowd shouted  “Equal rights for all” and “Go Davis". One man, who was part of a group carrying homemade signs that read: "Sam wants your Medicare $$$” and “Brownback expand Medicaid,” walked through the crown with a Davis/Docking for Governor sign.
Brownback told the crowd Saturday that 70% of Kansans voted to ban same-sex marriage. He thinks enough of those people are homophobic enough that they will vote for him to be their culture warrior, defending the state from the marrying gays, no matter how empty their wallets are. 
We'll know in two weeks whether his strategy works.