The end for Sam Brownback's political career?
Last week, October revenue numbers for Kansas were released and once again, it spelled total disaster for
Kansas:
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s fiscal policies were dealt an apparent blow Friday when the Kansas Department of Revenue reported state tax receipts came in $23 million short of projections in October and $46.5 million short for the first four months of the fiscal year.
Sam Brownback had high hopes for his drastic cuts:
Brownback has referred to his tax policy as a “real live experiment” of the theory that cutting taxes will stimulate economic growth, saying the cuts would be like “a shot of adrenaline” in the heart of the Kansas economy.
With Kansas tax revenue down an eye-popping
45 percent under Gov. Sam Brownback, it's no wonder he's been
trailing Democrat Paul Davis in nearly every poll to date.
Now it appears even Republicans are giving up on Brownback:
There are a lot of murmurs among top Republicans that Sam Brownback, Kansas’s Republican governor, is finished. He’s trailed in four of the last six polls, and a top Republican operative tells me that even the Republican Governors Association has thrown in the towel on the race. Two top Republican pollsters say he’s likely to lose.
As the
National Review Online notes, conservatives are watching closely:
A victory in Kansas will cheer Democrats on what may otherwise be a depressing day for their party. Brownback’s experiment in something like pure conservative governance will be held up as a failure widely applicable; on the Republican side, its meaning will be much analyzed.
If Gov. Sam Brownback can lose in conservative Kansas, Republicans won't be the only ones pointing to the damage conservative governance can do in a relatively short amount of time. Look out, 2016. It could be an uphill battle for conservatives.