Sen. Sam Brownback (R) ! ( Time) And who are you?: Each of these candidates harbors a Rocky-like hope. But they’re also in deep – financially to donors and emotionally to volunteers who have quit jobs or taken a semester off from school – so they need a reason to stop other than pride or exhaustion. In mid-October, a few days before he will drop out of the race, Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is lost and late, being driven around Iowa by a college intern in the Brownback family’s Chrysler minivan. He is looking at a map, pumping his own gas, paying with his own credit card and then running into McDonald’s. “$7.15? For a yogurt parfait and a small cheeseburger?” Brownback asks the cashier, who explains that the college kid got a Big Mac. “Oh,” he says, and drags a $20 bill and a quarter from his pocket. The Kansas senator cannot figure out why his conservative message isn’t connecting, and is confounded when Republicans bemoan the lack of a real conservative in the race. “Whenever I hear it, I’m over in the corner raising my hand: ‘Hello? Hello?'” … Now, at Loras College, a tiny Catholic school in Iowa, Brownback is speaking to a pro-life group. Five minutes into his talk, standing in front of a statue of Jesus on the Cross, he mentions his daughter. He has been talking to her on the phone all day as she boards flights to head home to Kansas. He hasn’t seen her since she joined Teach for America months ago. It will be days before he’s home. And he starts to cry.Rep. Nancy Boyda (D) ! (Topeka Capital-Journal) Tankers at Forbes could be retired: Eight stood-down KC-135E refueling tankers at Forbes Field may soon be allowed to retire, freeing up $1.1 million annually of taxpayer money. Though no longer used for national security purposes, the planes at Forbes and other airfields across the country were legally required by act of Congress to remain at “warm-ready” status. “The House voted this week on the 2008 NDAA, which included an amendment with language to allow the retirement of some of the planes,” said Thomas Seay, spokesman for Boyda, D-Kan. “We expect to know next month whether the planes at Forbes Field will be included.”