Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Democratic Dissidents

Campbell Brown and Kirsten Powers take on the leftist establishment

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Democrats are known for many things, but chief among them is the relentless determination to maintain a rigid progressive orthodoxy within their ranks. Bucking that orthodoxy requires character and conviction because those who do can expect a certain level of contempt directed their way from their oh-so-tolerant brethren. Campbell Brown and Kirsten Powers are two women who have demonstrated a willingness to take positions decidedly at odds with the progressive establishment.

Brown’s Democratic roots can be traced back to her father, Louisiana Democratic State Senator and Secretary of State James H. Brown Jr. Although James Brown is Presbyterian, Campbell was raised as a Roman Catholic, which she remained until converting to Judaism following hermarriage to Republican strategist and Fox News analyst, Dan Senor.
Brown worked her way up through the ranks of television reporting, winning an Emmy award for her reporting on Hurricane Katrina while working at NBC. She followed an 11 year career at that network with a stint at CNN. She began in 2008 as an anchor for CNN’s “Election Center,” renamed “Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull” and ultimately “Campbell Brown.” 

During the 2008 election cycle, she engaged in a controversial interview with John McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, questioning Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin’s executive bona fides. That interview earned her accusations of bias from the McCain campaign, who accused her of going “over the line.” In 2010 CNN released her from her contract due to low ratings.

Brown moved on to writing opinion pieces that indicated such bias was a figment of John McCain’s imagination. In 2012 she penned two pieces for the New York Times. In one, she insisted a “paternalistic” Barack Obama should stop “condescending to women.” In the other she criticizedPlanned Parenthood’s self-destructive strategy of embracing “blind partisanship” that was costing the organization supporters. In 2013 she urged Daily Beast readers to keep the shooting in Newton, CT off the “culture war battlefield. Yet it was a piece for the Wall Street Journal that same year indicating where she was going with her post-TV career: Brown began challenging the left’s cherished nexus between the Democratic Party and the unionized education establishment, taking the New York City teachers unions to task for protecting sexual predators.


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