Brownback stresses need for foreign policy experience / LJWorld.com

Archive for Wednesday, August 15, 2007

By Philip Elliott - Associated Press Writer

August 15, 2007

Merrimack, N.H. — Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback on Tuesday criticized President Bush and two GOP rivals, saying the presidency isn't a foreign policy classroom.

Brownback's criticism that governors often do not have the foreign policy experience necessary to be president was aimed primarily at rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, both former governors. But in the process, he also took a jab at the man they all seek to replace, former Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

"We've got to walk more humbly and a lot more wisely than the current president," said Brownback, a Kansas senator and former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"I really believe this next president needs to go in with knowledge on foreign policy and not learn it on the job," said Brownback, who has been a vocal activist against the genocide in Darfur.

"We have a tendency to elect governors as president because people like executive experience. I don't have any problem with that. The problem is most governors don't have foreign policy experience."

Brownback finished third in the Iowa straw poll last weekend. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, easily won the contest and Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, finished a distant second.

Brownback's criticism of Bush might help him in New Hampshire, where the unpopular war in Iraq was an important factor in the defeat of two incumbent GOP congressmen in 2006.

Brownback has scuffled with Romney in recent weeks over social and political policy, including fiercely criticizing Romney's changed position on abortion. Again on Tuesday he told New Hampshire's WKXL-FM that Romney "hasn't been consistent on these positions in the past. He's stated that himself. He continues really even to support new research on the youngest of humans."

Romney retorted during a recent debate: "I get tired of people that are holier than thou because they've been pro-life longer than I have."

Brownback, who spoke at Thomas More College, also said he now will try to match his performance in Iowa, where social conservatives hold sway, in New Hampshire.

"We're building a grassroots campaign. I am not an overly funded candidate," he said after his campaign breakfast.

Discussion

LJWorld.com doesn't necessarily condone the comments here, nor does it review every post.
Read our full policy. Also, read about banned accounts and harassing comments.

16 August 2007
at 9:24 p.m.

Suggest removal

Permalink

eesti006 (Anonymous) says…

Senator Brownback is an incompetent fool- a foreign Relations disaster who sponsored a law that makes it a crime for an American to even send a love letter to a foreigner!!!

I am talking about the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act of 2005 that Brownback sponsored- a blatantly unconstitutional law that seeks to “protect foreign women” by making it illegal for an American man to say hello online to a woman in another country without first having to supply criminal history and personal information. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,1804

Brownback championed the law with the Tahirih Justice Center an Iranian American NGO cleverly playing the “protection of foreign bride” card while masking the true motive which is to prevent American men from communicating or dating “foreign women uninfected by American feminism”.This law is nothing more than legalized misandry carefully orchestrated by money hungry NGO executives who live lavish lifestyles paid for with taxpayers dollars. This law gives the power to the government and women's groups deciding the conditions under which American men can romance or communicate.

Lets get to the truth: The only scientific study done on abuse rates of International marriages was done by the INS in 1999 that found abuse rates at a miniscule 1% which was one seventh the abuse rate for all US couples.

The incompetent Brownback is completely guillible and stupid. He claimed International matchmaking somehow constitutes “sex trafficking” despite the fact that there has never been a US based matchmaking organization even arrested for trafficking.

IMBRA is a fraudulent waste of taxpayers money that fails to protect women from violence. Senator Brownback you have some explaining to do!