Dallas-area Republican congressional candidate Stephen Broden caught nationwide flak October 22 for telling a local radio talk-show host that a violent revolution against a runaway federal government is possible. “The option is on the table. I don’t think that we should remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms,” Broden told the talk-show host on the local radio station WFAA, adding: “However, it is not the first option.”
Broden had noted in that same interview: “We have a constitutional remedy. And the Framers say if that [doesn’t] work, revolution.”
Though clearly made in a theoretical context as Broden referenced the American Founding Fathers’ revolution, the statement predictably garnered harsh condemnation from political opponents. Stephen Broden revealed himself to be an extremist with some very dangerous ideas,” Texas Democratic Party chairman Boyd Richie told the Dallas Morning News. Even Fox News Host Glenn Beck, who had invited Broden on his television and radio show as a regular guest, distanced himself from the Dallas pastor: “I can’t stand with you at all if you’re saying stuff like that.”
Broden elaborated on the point in statements to the press after the scandal broke. In 2010, the only way to bring about change is through the ballot box, Broden told supporters the next day.
On his campaign website, he explained: With our liberties being threatened, as much today as they were in 1776, I believe the only way to bring about positive change and alter our repressive government is through the ballot box…. I will say it again to be clear the only way to defend our liberty is through peaceful change at the ballot box.
Dallas Morning News columnist Mark Davis explained the controversy in a October 25 column:
Only the most foolish of analyses would group Pastor Broden with the sliver of fringe nutjobs who may actually be plotting such a thing in some Montana cave. Does he have lessons to learn about staying on message and sticking to the index cards that usually accompany the robotic but successful utterances of most winning candidates? Yes.
But does he deserve the stain of someone who has ventured into whack-job territory? Absolutely not, and those who would put him there are engaged in character assassination.
What Pastor Broden ventured into was a nuanced answer to an enormously complex question that deserves deep consideration and far more scrutiny than today’s short-attention-span coverage tends to give.
Broden is running as a Republican for Congress against entrenched Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has been embroiled in a scandal for awarding some 23 Congressional Black Caucus scholarships to family members and relatives of her staff.
Photo: Stephen Pastor Broden
