While I’m on an anti-Brownback theme, I noticed a bit of election-year pandering by Sen. Whole Life.  Brownback voted for the Ensign amendment to the appropriation bill for the State Department.  The amendment eliminates a small rise in U.N. peacekeeping funding.  Personally, I think this amendment is just fine.  What is a little surprising is that Brownback, the champion of Darfur, would vote to weaken proposed funding for U.N. peacekeeping when a new peacekeeping mission has been authorised for Darfur.  It isn’t really that surprising when you consider that no Republican presidential candidate wants to be seen voting for increasing U.S. funding of U.N. operations when he has primaries that he wants to win.  Nation-building and peacekeeping may be all the rage in certain limited circles on the right, but rank-and-file Republicans don’t care for them and they really don’t like the U.N.  The amusing thing is that Brownback has voted the right way this time, but his career of internationalist activism and “bleeding-heart conservatism” will still be held against him.  Given how poorly he’s doing overall, he might as well have voted against the amendment and remained true to his sappy foreign policy vision.