Sam Brownback is perplexed.  The U.S. Senator from Kansas and Presidential candidate is a Republican whose politics—he is against marriage for gay people, he is against abortion, and he has a clean image in a party tainted by scandal—should speak favorably to the party's base.  But it has not.  "I'm baffled by that myself," Senator Brownback told Wikinews reporter David Shankbone.  "We haven't been able to raise money."  
A recent poll in Iowa has put him in eighth place, with 2% supporting his campaign.  "If we don't finish fourth or better in Iowa...we'll pull out."  
Senator Brownback's relationship with God infuses almost every answer you find below.  Although he doesn't feel "competent" to explain why God would dislike gays, he does feel strongly that allowing two men or two women to enter into the union of marriage will destroy it for heterosexuals.  Pointing to the research of Stanley Kurtz at the Hoover Institution, Brownback asserts that Northern Europeans have "taken the sacredness out of the institution." 
In the interview, Senator Brownback discusses the tug-and-pull that befalls him when his constituents show up at his office and say, "Look, I'm a conservative, but we need this bridge, we need this subsidy, we need this hospital.”  Brownback feels this spending system needs to be changed; however, when it comes to energy policy, Brownback is there for his constituents.  David Shankbone asked the Kansas Senator, a supporter of cellulosic ethanol, why he doesn't support the lowering of tariffs on sugar since sugar ethanol delivers 8 times the energy output of cellulosic ethanol.  Brazil, in particular, has become energy independent because of its sugar ethanol program.  It's cheaper to produce, and there is vastly more bang for the buck in sugar fuel than in corn fuel; an entire country no longer needs to import oil because of it.  Federal tariffs currently make sugar ethanol too expensive in the United States.  "You're going to kill the ethanol industry here just as it gets going," was Senator Brownback's response.  However, there is a debate over whether the process to make corn ethanol uses more energy than the ethanol itself produces.  
Below is David Shankbone's interview with Senator Sam Brownback.
David Shankbone:  Senator Brownback, how are you?
DS: I read that.
DS: Is it pretty gratifying for you to work with people on the other side of the aisle to try and find solutions?
DS:  I remember sort of the old days where you'd hear about Ted Kennedy being best friends with Orrin Hatch; do you think that the Tom DeLay period ushered in an era where people were too opposed to each other on the sides of the aisle?
DS: Running for President has to be a grueling experience, and there must be a million things that you see out there when you're on the road that either you had not thought about before or you didn't know existed.  Could you tell me about one?
DS:  That's great.  Throughout my life, my father, who is an avid lifelong Republican, he used to tell me--this is a question that I'd asked Tom Tancredo as well, but I think it really comes down to one of the central issues in this race--he had said, "All we need is a Republican Congress, a Republican Senate, and a Republican White House to get the country on the right track."  And last year, he expressed to me that he was very disappointed with where things have gone with the Republicans running things.  He feels let down; he feels like he was lied to by the Party, either through the rationale for the Iraq war, the sex and bribery scandals, the pork barrel projects, and, as Alan Greenspan said, the fiscal irresponsibility.  He feels like there have been many broken promises.  Why should someone like my father vote Republican today?  And I can assure you he will.  But why do you think he should?
DS:  When you think about dropping out of the race, what emotions do you feel?
DS:  You've discussed it, and I'm just wondering when it's a thought that occurs to you-- not an inevitability---just when you think about it as a possibility, how do you feel when you reflect upon it?
DS:  Do you feel sad when you think about possibly leaving?
DS:  Evangelical candidates haven't fared particularly well in this primary season.  What do you think is the reason for that?
DS:  The Democrats often have concerns about the electability of their candidates; Hillary Clinton, for example. Do you think that it might scare some people that in this point in time that Evangelicals aren't particularly electable?
DS:  Do you think Mitt Romney's Mormonism is an issue that people should take into consideration?
DS:  What if someone was a Zoroastrian?
DS:  Or a Satanist.
DS:  Really?
DS:  Even though religious beliefs are so fundamental to a person?  It's more of a policy issue than it is a faith issue?
DS:  If someone told you that they were scared to vote for someone who doesn't believe in evolution, what would you say to that person?
DS:  You don’t think that evolution is incompatible with an intelligent design theory?  That we could have evolved based upon the evolution idea, but that it could have still been the work of God?
DS:  What's your personal belief on that?
DS:  It works.
DS:  What do you think is the greatest threat to humanity?
DS:  What is the culture of life?  How would you describe that phrase?
DS:  Bobby Schindler, Terry Schiavo's brother, endorsed your candidacy by saying that "Sam Brownback is the pro-life conservative we can trust to stand for all life, regardless of political calculations."  Do you think the death penalty detracts from the culture of life?
DS:  A common question I've asked in my interviews is about the Iraq War and how it has affected someone as a person.  People often proffer their opinion on the war, but they don't really talk much about how it has affected them personally, perhaps in their world view.  The writer Gay Talese insisted the war has not affected him at all. "I wish it had," he said.  Talese thinks there's a problem with Americans not sacrificing enough, and he argued that we need conscription.  Do you think we need conscription, if not to support the manpower of the war, to make Americans more involved with the wars that we are fighting?
DS:  What you think the proper role of Congress is in a time of war?
DS:  Do you feel the American people were misled with the war in Iraq?
DS:  What do you think is going to happen to Egypt after Mubarak?
DS:  Do you think it's a bad idea to have elections in countries if it's possible that an Islamic extremist group will win, such as happened in Palestine with Hamas?
DS:  Do you think that things like the Bridge to Nowhere are projects that shouldn't be funded?  And I'm using that popular phrase--I realize it's a little emotionally charged--but things such as that.
DS:  You support the Elon plan that would essentially allow Israel to keep the entire West Bank while taking little responsibility for its Arab residents.  The plan is against U.S., Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian policies.  Why do you think that would advance peace in the Middle East?
DS:  I interviewed the writer Augusten Burroughs.  I would like you to answer a question that he posed.  He said that "God does not care that the person I watch TV with also has hairy arms, that the idea that a God would not like homosexuals is patently absurd, that it doesn't even begin to become logical in any way, that the idea that the architect of gravity, the being that created the ability for elemental particles that are absolutely nothing to come together and create living organisms and bricks and buildings and cars and jets, that the architect of absolutely everything would care about the sex of the person that this little human loves seems ridiculous."  Why is that not ridiculous?
DS:  Why do you think it would bother God that somebody is gay?
DS:  In what country that has passed same-sex marriage has traditional marriage declined?
DS:  Got you.
DS:  Why did you vote against the Federal expansion of hate crimes to include sexual orientation?
DS:  Ministers speaking out against homosexuality would come under the province of a hate crime?
DS:  If you could choose your manner of death, how would you die?
DS:  It's a Marcel Proust question.
DS:  But you've never thought about how--if you could choose how you'd prefer to die?
DS:  It seems like such a basic human thing to contemplate, one's mortality.  I mean, I believe you, but--
DS:  What weren't you happy with?
DS:  That was your--
DS:  Was that your impetus to run for the Senate?
DS:  What trait do you deplore in other people?
DS:  Oh...
DS:  Do you believe that a good Christian should also be a good environmentalist?
DS:  How so?
DS:  And you don’t think that Arctic drilling contradicts that notion?
DS:  What about sugar ethanol?
DS:  Do you think we should lower tariffs on sugar in order to be able to import more Brazilian sugar ethanol?
DS:  But it would reduce our dependency on foreign oil, thus increasing our national security, wouldn't it?  Or is the ethanol industry here more important?
DS:  But the energy that you derive from that is so much less than it is in sugar ethanol.
DS:  Senator, do you think that Wikipedia is important?
DS:  Definitely.  What do you find important about it?
DS:  I tried to get an interview with David Miscavige of the Church of Scientology, and I spoke to their Director of Public Relations; I had about a twenty-minute phone call with him, and he was very hostile to it.  One of the things that I'd said to him--because he was saying that a lot of information is incorrect--I made the point to him that, "You know, it may be incorrect, but the idea is that you can have Scientologists go on there to correct it."  It's not a one-sided place for information; if you feel that there's inaccuracies, the idea is that you can also have people who know the truth go on there and correct it and debate about it, if that is what is necessary to get an accurate view.  Whereas if you say something to Newsweek, and they print something that's incorrect, you're stuck.
DS:  Very good to talk to you.  Best of luck, Senator Brownback.

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Sam Brownback on running for President, gay rights, the Middle East and religion