Kansas GOP Insider (wannabe): Brownback Does Television

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Brownback Does Television

Gov. Sam Brownback appeared on "Ruckus," a local public affairs television program that appears weekly on KCPT, after the Aug. 4 election.

(Full disclosure:  I will appear as a panelist on the show this fall.)

It may be too little, too late, but this is the kind of thing that should have been happening all along. Mike Shannin, the newsman who hosts the program and who interviewed Brownback last week, is fair. Kansas conservatives need to do a better job of finding fair journalists and giving those people the scoop.

Of course, other news outlets picked up the Brownback interview and ran it through their liberal grape press, but Brownback had a long segment to explain his policies and what’s working. In this interview, Brownback set a narrative, to which the liberals had to respond. They did so in this article. Notice Brownback’s comments receive top billing. Most people won’t read all the way to the end to find the liberal response.

Why wasn’t this kind of thing happening over the last 2 years?

Brownback looked tired, but he was well prepared. I learned things that I didn’t know—things that the media has simply ignored. (For example, Brownback said small businesses are growing and moving to Kansas.)

The best part of the whole thing: Brownback’s media team can examine this interview the way Bill Snyder digs through game tapes after a K-State football team. They can help Brownback adjust and improve for the next interview, which Brownback SHOULD NOT give to journalists committed to attacking him. You know who those people are. Do not give them access.

One thing Brownback admitted on the interview—and I agree—part of the problem in Kansas right now is simply bad publicity. The media isn’t friendly to conservatives, and honestly, it probably never will be. BUT we can do a better job of messaging, and we need to. This was a good start.

1 comment:

  1. The problem with allowing Johnson County to raise it own school funding amount is if the legislature allows it, then the Senators and Representatives from Johnson County will never vote for any increase in state wide funding, we just as well allow Johnson County to become its own state, lord knows it has more access to state government than it does to local government. Why do you think the legislature is always sticking its nose into local county property tax issue's? Its more of an urban issue that doesn't effect rural counties nearly as much. Rural legislators get "sucked in" in order to placate the urban vote. Its really that simple.