Brownback endorsement: Rudy and Romney

Last week, Sam Brownback met with Rudy Giuliani. Deal Hudson has an account that concurs with what I have heard from Brownback associates and with what Brownback’s people have told outside groups: Brownback caused a controversy by accepting an invitation from Rudy Giuliani to discuss life issues following the Senator’s Read more…

NRLC disavows Bopp’s Brownback statements

Yesterday, Jim Bopp, a supporter of Mitt Romney and former General Counsel (they actually spend text clarifying that he is the former)  to the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) attacked Sam Brownback for saying something nice about Rudy Giuliani.

Turns out that he was nasty enough that NRLC disavowed his statements. I have obtained a copy of a letter that NRLC’s President, Executive Director, and Legislative Director, they apologized for Bopp’s statements. The choice bits:

Mr. Bopp’s remarks quoted above, if accurately reported, do not represent National Right to Life, and we disagree with them …

We reject most emphatically anyone’s suggestion that you have sacrificed or would sacrifice the interests of the unborn in order to garner some "personal political benefit."

In January, 2007, the National Right to Life Board of Directors adopted a resolution urging that no NRLC state affiliate, no executive staff member of any state affiliate, and no NRLC Board member should endorse any candidate for President of the United States until an endorsement is adopted by the Board as a whole. Staff employees of the National Right to Life Committee are also barred from doing so. However, Mr. Bopp is neither a director nor an employee of NRLC. Mr. Bopp has served as NRLC’s general counsel for many years, but he is not an in-house general counsel;

In other words, Bopp was attacking Brownback, not because he was right, but because the Romney campaign asked him to. I wonder if it also means that NRLC is willing to play nice if that’s what it comes to.

Update: The American Spectator’s Washington Prowler drills down on this also:

But Bopp is now facing the same kind questions that were raised by conservatives when respected conservatives like Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo supported the nomination of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers to a seat on the Supreme Court, when most conservatives were opposing the nomination.

Bopp is now in the eye of a storm after criticizing Sen. Sam Brownback for meeting with Giuliani, a meeting, sources say, that Giuliani asked for. Romney and Brownback had a scheduled meeting for this week, but it was abruptly canceled after Bopp’s public criticism of Brownback, who ended his presidential run last week.

"Bopp is losing a great deal of credibility by attacking Brownback," says a longtime Washington-based pro-life conservative activist. "We know that Romney is at the very least a squish on abortion. But Bopp seems to ignore years of on-the-record statements and expects us to believe him and Romney’s ‘conversion’ because he says we should believe a man who has done nothing for the [right to life] movement. Nothing."

Full text of the letter after the jump. (more…)

Brownback drops out

I have a lot of admiration for Senator Sam Brownback. I am deeply sympathetic to a lot of positions that he has taken. But he is dropping out. When the tank runs out of gas, the car stops moving. That’s what happened with the Senator and money. They did a Read more…

Two new Iraq talking points?

Yesterday, the Biden-Brownback plan passed the Senate with 75 votes. For the first time, someone on both the left and the right can claim genuine progress on pulling out troops. As Marc Ambinder points out, this is a good talking point for Biden,  where Joe Biden is counting that liberal Read more…

The battle being set on the right

One way of viewing the result of the straw polls is how it re-organizes the field. For a while, at least, Mike Huckabee can claim a pseudo first-tier status, compared in the same breath as the big-4. The Wall Street Journal presented this this way: Should Mr. Huckabee capitalize on Read more…

Ames: Brownback

C-SPAN’s coverage makes it clear that he brought lots and lots of kids to the straw poll. Sam Brownback starts with tying together families with terrorism. Huckabee did that in his own way. He really talks about abortion differently than the others. He talked about "reviving the economy." Republicans don’t Read more…

No buses for Huckabee?

The Politico’s Roger Simon is reporting that Mike Huckabee has no buses: Mike Huckabee does not have buses. Huckabee needs to get people to the straw poll in Ames this Saturday and even if he had the money for buses — which he doesn’t — there are no buses left Read more…

Huckabee disappoints in Q2 fundraising

In Q1, Mike Huckabee’s fundraising team disappointed. Looks like he did it in Q2 also: Republican Mike Huckabee raised $764,000 for his presidential campaign from April through June and had $437,000 cash on hand at the end of last month, according to financial reports filed Sunday. The former Arkansas governor Read more…