October 18, 2007 10:46 AM

Brownback out of ammo

View image Photos by M.E. Sprengelmeyer

The Associated Press is reporting that Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas is expected to drop out of the 2008 Republican presidential contest on Friday, in part due to troubles raising campaign cash.

Brownback didn't go down without a fight.

He was a frequent visitor to Iowa, the first caucus state. He had a well-honed message mixing family values with his call for major tax reform and a bipartisan, federalist solution to the instability in Iraq. He had an aggressive campaign operation that picked fights with rivals up and down the candidate "tiers."

But he never caught on -- as his 2 percent showing in the latest USA Today/Gallup poll suggested.

We had a good time chasing Brownback down the "Back Roads to the White House." For some highlights, look below.

How we'll remember Sen. Sam Brownback:

* For his shooting spree in Ames, Iowa, where he invited journalists to watch him show off his love of the 2nd Amendment at a local rifle range.

* For his categorical denial when O. Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa asked him at that event, point-blank, if he had anything to do with the costumed "varmint" that was stalking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to campaign events. (In hindsight, the collective press corps was kicking itself for not asking him about the dolphin "Flipper" chasing Romney or the "convict" stalking one of Brownback's ideological rivals, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.)

* For his stump speech line -- repeated about a jillion times -- that the bulky, U.S. tax code should be "taken behind the barn and killed with a dull ax." Brownback has been promoting a modified flat tax plan and he toted around the voluminous tax code for visual effect.

* For his amusing, public fights with Romney, Huckabee and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado -- even at times when he and Tancredo were tied in the low single digits.

* For an ice cream social in Dennison, Iowa, when he sat around a table and chatted with local residents and then whined when his staff tried to pull him away to the next stop. "But I didn't get my ice cream," the Senator said.

* For his family-friendly festivities at the GOP's Iowa Straw poll in Ames, where he created a Christian-revival setting inside a giant, supposedly "air conditioned" tent and a carnival atmosphere for the kids outside. The much-hyped air conditioning was hard to detect in 100 degree temperatures. Meanwhile, we got the first clue that Brownback was worried about a disappointing showing that day when one of his staffers anxiously button-holed a reporter as the vote was winding down and tried to convince him to set aside all journalistic objectivity to go cast a vote. Brownback finished third -- behind Romney and Huckabee -- that day. And though it wasn't so far behind Huckabee, Brownback was at best an afterthought in most of the media's coverage. It was the beginning of the end.

Posted by M.E. Sprengelmeyer at 10:46 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack