The American Spectator

Sen. Sam Brownback, by far the closest to a Reagan Republican we have in the toe-dipping presidential race now, formally opened his exploratory committee this morning.

With the exception of his foray into parts of the immigration debate, Brownback — unlike McCain on a host of issues, and Romney on social issues — hasn’t required “evolution” to get to where he is today. Brownback has been consistent on his old campaign themes of reforming government, cutting taxes and returning to traditional values.

More important, no other U.S. Senator deserves more credit than he for scuttling the Harriet Miers nomination. In fact, Brownback and his staff’s vigilence on this one issue deserves particular attention.

Also going for Brownback: his faith. As a fairly recent Catholic convert, Brownback — who is right on all of the life issues — deserves to have Catholics behind him. We’ll be getting into this a bit more, but both McCain and Romney have hired guns working for them in Catholic outreach, whereas Brownback doesn’t need ‘em.

So can Brownback win? To say the least it’s more than an uphill battle. But if he can push the other candidates to lock in promises on judges, taxes and life issues in a way that puts the party right, then we say he should stay in the race as long as financially sensible.