You may have read reports of Nebraska's Senator Ben Sasse's town hall call with constituents in which he said that Trump "...kisses dictators' butts....and mocks evangelicals." Sasse doesn't pull any punches in this phone call. From the Omaha World Herald article:
“It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies. It’s that the United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. The ways I criticize President Obama for that kind of spending, I’ve criticized President Trump for as well. He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”
I hope you'll excuse me if I fail to call Sasse a profile in courage.
"...Sasse critics were quick to note that despite his rhetoric, the senator has often backed Trump when it counts — most prominently during the president’s impeachment trial.
“...I think that it’s my duty to level with Nebraskans even though I recognize that a lot of our voters in Nebraska are Trumpier than I am and they sometimes get frustrated with me,” Sasse said. Sasse went on to say he fears that Trump will ultimately drive the country to the left by causing young people and women to turn away from the Republican Party."
Thanks to Anne for pointing out this article by Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post, titled "The Sad Case of Ben Sasse":
"If Sasse is honest enough to make this harsh evaluation of Trump on all those grounds, he surely must have recognized that Trump committed impeachable acts in trying to extort our ally Ukraine in a hot war with Russia to concoct dirt on his opponent, former vice president Joe Biden. Nevertheless, Sasse voted with every other Republican, save Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), to acquit Trump. As House impeachment manager and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) put it, “If you find that the House has proved its case, and still vote to acquit, your name will be tied to his with a cord of steel and for all of history.” And so it will be for Sasse."
The whole article is worth reading.
A little background information on Sasse's situation; this spring he faced a primary challenge from another Republican, Matt Innes, who felt that Sasse was nowhere near sufficiently supporting of Trump. He beat Innes handily. The Democratic candidate opposing him in November is Chris Janicek. Janicek got in some difficulties over sexual harrassment accusations after the primary. The Democratic party in Nebraska wanted him to drop out of the race after that, but he refused. They wanted to endorse the candidate that opposed him in the primary, but could not legally do so if he refused to step out. So they are unofficially supporting an independent write-in candidate, Preston Love, Jr. (For whom I cast my vote.) My point in mentioning these things is that ever since the primary, Sasse is facing no credible opposition for his Senate seat.
Sasse has ambitions way beyond li'l old Nebraska. My take is that he wants to run for president in 2024 so badly he can taste it. But to paraphrase Adam Schiff, his name will be tied to Trump's with a cord of steel. There is a saying that if you sup with the devil you need a long spoon. His spoon isn't nearly long enough.
I read his book. So disappointing. Very shallow - and hypocritical as far as how he lives his own life. It seems he attempts to talk one game while walking another in pretty much everything, hoping that nobody will notice.
ReplyDeleteAnne, which book was it, "The Vanishing American Adult: the Coming of Age Crisis", or "Them: Why We Hate Each Other". I have to confess, I haven't read either of them, though I was sort of interested in "Them". Lord knows we need to get beyond "othering" people.
DeleteI guess it must have been "Them". The description at Amazon is vague but it sounds like the right book.
DeleteI read a lot of books online that I download from the library. I didn't want to spend money on his book, but the online library had it.
Rubin says: "In some sense, one can excuse the dimmer and loonier Republicans and the money-grubbing conservative media personalities who lack the brains and character to defy Trump. The greater tragedy is the Republicans who once had promising careers and the respect of their fellow Americans but then sold their souls simply to remain a member of the Senate and of the right-wing tribe."
ReplyDeleteI would be interested in hearing Republicans respond to this. What are the reasons "good Republicans" have failed yank Trump's chain? Is it just reelection? Or are there other trade-offs?
Likely not a topic we will hear Republicans address candidly.
Take care out there in Nebraska!
"I would be interested in hearing Republicans respond to this. What are the reasons "good Republicans" have failed yank Trump's chain?"
DeleteFor Republican politicians like Sasse, it's very simple: they need Trump's voters to win their own elections. Sasse, it seems to me, has been trying to walk a tightrope for the last four years, trying not to alienate Trump voters while being true to himself. Katherine clearly doesn't think he's succeeded.
As for Republican voters, give us a little credit: we're not (or at least most of us are not) complete fools. Many conservatives see voting for a Democrat as just as bad, or maybe worse. Part of that no doubt is tribalism at work, and part of it is genuine loathing (and some fear) of Democratic policies. If you want to read a deeper dive on some of the trade-offs Republican voters are trying to work through, check out this Charles Cooke column: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/11/02/trump-maybe/
Jim, I got paywalled out after the first paragraph. But I think I understand where they are going. I have family members who see voting for a Democrat as a betrayal of their values. I have been a Republican for most of my life, but I see Trump as an existential threat to our democracy. I have a hard time understanding why said family members don't also see that. I think both parties are undergoing a sea change. If the Republicans cling to Trump, their change becomes a very dark thing.
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DeleteThanks for the link, but I can't get past the firewall.
DeleteNot complete fools? Give Republicans credit? Your party had a cast of thousands to choose from in the 2016 primaries. You chose the biggest jackass in the group. It seems to me you've wrung all possible benefits out of him. He's a liability to Republicans and an insult and danger to the nation.
Time to kick him to the curb before Republicans look even more stupid and morally bereft.
Kamala Harris is not widely beloved by Democrats, and Joe Biden absolutely cannot run again due to age.
If the GOP can stop freaking out about abortion and socialism for a few years, there's a good chance they could win in 2024 with a decent candidate.
Also, "fear" of Democratic Party policies? Puh-leeze, Jim. What Democratic policies are scarier than Trump?
DeleteAlso: Republican senators with 2024 ambitions are going to have to scrub hard to get the Trump off. Kasich or even Chris Christie might be viable.
Rather see a former governor, Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, maybe Nikki Haley?
DeleteJust not Pete Ricketts!
Did you see Charlie Baker's approval ratings last time he ran? It was something like 82% approval among Rs and 86% among Ds. Of course, Mitt Romney had good approval ratings in the Bay State, too. I think Charlie, like Mitt, may be a little too civilized, a lot too smart and way too independent of the Big Givers for the GOP powers.
DeleteP.S. John Bolton wrote that Nikki Haley is an empty head with an eye on the main chance and not, in his opinion, to be trusted with anything serious.
DeleteAnd John Bolton is of course an objective source!
DeleteI didn’t get hit with a paywall. But the article essentially says nothing. The author can’t support Biden because of abortion. Somehow he thinks Biden will cause even more abortion when it is far more likely that Biden will propose woman and family friendly support policies that will reduce the numbers of abortions, as us the case in Europe. They have their conservative judges. If Roe is overturned then some states will have legal abortion and some may not. It will not end abortion.
DeleteTrump is destroying our country. He may destroy our democracy. As Katherine notes, this is not about normal policy debates - it’s an existential crisis,
Republicans who put loyalty to the tribe, or maybe tax policy, as more important than the preservation of our country will be just as guilty as trump when they realize, too late, that being a shortsighted single issue voter, or clinging to low taxes above all, or religious freedom for me but not for you has destroyed our once great nation.
Change is possible - my husband and I, one of my sisters, and many of our lifelong Republican friends all recognize the danger that is trump. We were Republicans once too. Conservative commentators and former politicians, national Security experts and military leaders all warn against a second term for this evil man. A man who ran on a platform of inciting fear and hatred of non- whites is evil and now he has doubled down on the hate. Frankly, I have no patience for people who are willing to risk our country for lower taxes or for diverting tax money to religious schools. Selfishness run rampant. Pope Francis himself has stated clearly that abortion is only one life issue and that Christians must look at the whole picture.
There are some vague arguments that the democrats will destroy what is left of the constitution. I guess the author thinks it’s better if trump does it instead. After all, he’s done a great job of it so far. He seems to think that a vague “school choice” platform is in jeopardy. That usually translates into wanting to use tax money to support religious schools - not a good idea. Etc, etc. his pro life stance does not seem to extend to desperate asylum seekers, refugees or other poor people.
If he and others see the evil of trump, and still struggle to vote for Biden, they might need to take a deep look into their ulterior motives. A thorough examination of conscience.
The author seems totally unconcerned that trump promotes hate. And he also seems to have adopted the conservative hysteria about Harris. Yet he, like every other conservative who expresses fear and loathing of Harris give not a single reason for this hysteria - maybe because she’s black and female and could become president someday?
The article does no put forth any convincing arguments to explain why it’s so hard for these people to just honestly concede that trump is by far the worst of the evils. The angst is not justified
IMHO
I'd still like to read the article for myself. If, by some miracle, Biden wins and Mitch McConnell is ousted, the only way forward will be to try to restore a working relationship with a lot of disgruntled Republicans. Without some major effort to work with them, a Democratic administration will be faced with complete gridlock during a pandemic and a time of civil unrest and loss of standing on the world stage.
DeleteSasse's comments lead me to believe that Congress could work up some bipartisan priorities that would repair some of the damage Trump has done re foreign relations, pandemic and other disaster responses, and a more humane response to border control issues.
We need to prove to ourselves and the world that we have dragged our national dysfunction to rehab, sobered up, and can think straight.
Can that happen? I am not optimisic, but if we don't try we're screwed.
Sidebar: Big demonstration at the capitol in ending in support of the individuals locked up for trying to kidnap the governor. They were just trying to make a valid citizen's arrest of an out-of-control government official. Yup. And all that talk about popping a cap in her when she answered the door or trying her for treason on their own, that was just friendly hijinx.
I didn't realize the Cooke article is behind a paywall.
DeleteHe lists many Democratic policies which he dislikes and which Biden either supports or is being coy about, from intransigence on abortion (a dealbreaker for him as for me) to the likelihood of reinstating the Iran treaty to abolishing the Senate filibuster to packing the Supreme Court to admitting additional states.*
By school choice presumably he means vouchers and charter schools. He dislikes the judges that Democratic presidents nominate. He considers Democrats at least as dangerous about the First Amendment as Trump is. He dislikes some of Trump's economic policies but believes the Democrats are even worse on economics.
He says all this without shying away from Trump's enormous defects. What he has written isn't a brief for Trump. It's to say that thoughtful conservatives have two very bad choices in November.
* Admitting additional states to outflank the political opposition is an idea that 1850s-vintage Democrats also were seduced by, the idea then as now being to tip the Senate and electoral college into their column, with the divisive issue then as slavery rather than abortion, and the target territories then as Cuba and Nicaragua, not to mention California and Kansas.
In the case of Hillary Clinton, who got on my nerves a little bit too, vs a bloviator who, in 10 years, had gone from nothing to D to Independent to R, I could see maybe voting for what appeared to be the lesser of two evils.
DeleteBut today: $3 trillion deficit this year. Oh, yeah, the pandemic had a lot to do with that. But without the pandemic, it would have been over $1 trillion! Why? "Huuuuge tax cut" and wild and crazy spending. Is THAT good old Republican fiscal responsibility?
(Maybe it is. St. Ronnie Reagan had the same kind of results with his version of pay-for-themselves tax cuts. Where is Bob Dole when we really need him)
If you let Trump talk long enough, he always says the quiet part out loud. Like in the debate with Biden when he threw the pro-life cause under the bus: "President Donald J. Trump: (10:25)You don’t know what’s on the ballot. Why is [Roe v. Wade] on the ballot? Why is it on the ballot? It’s not on the ballot.
DeleteVice President Joe Biden: (10:31)It’s on the ballot in the court.
President Donald J. Trump: (10:32)I don’t think so."
Mark Shea has written a series on his blog, "Voting With the Mind of Christ". There's ten parts in the series, but as far as I can see it's pretty much summed up in the first one:
"The issue is pretty simple. There is no prolife party. There never has been. There is the party that gave us both the Roe and Casey decisions, has never overturned them, and has refunded Planned Parenthood every year for decades (including raising that funding every year of the Trump administration to its highest levels in history). That party, led by the Most Prolife President in History, has been rewarded for its record Planned Parenthood funding with the highest Planned Parenthood abortion rate in 15 years.
Then there are the Democrats, who just let all that happen because they don’t have to do anything but uphold what the GOP created. Under Dems, abortion rates have seen their most precipitous drops. Biden’s administration brought it to its lowest rate since Roe. Under the GOP Mexico City policy, abortions in sub-Saharan Africa rise by 40%.
Given that, we are obliged to judge prudently, not who is Catholic, but who will be the more competent president and the one who is not a moral monster and Mob Boss who has killed 180K Americans with his criminal negligence, driven the economy straight into the ground as a result, gone to war with the American ability to vote, and betrayed US troops to Russia-paid bounty hunters, to name just a few of his crimes."
And actually the tenth and last one in the series is pretty good.
DeleteI hear no Democrats talking about adding states right now, though Guam, Puerto Rico, and the VI have been possibilities for a very long time. Packing the court is a terrible idea. I'm fact, doing anything really radical is a terrible idea. We need four years to recover some sense of normality. We need a Jerry Ford, which is pretty much who Uncle Joe is.
DeleteBut none of these ideas would be on the table if Republicans hadn't had a complete meltdown and voted in Trump.
My brother is a deficit hawk with libertarian leanings. He's not voting for either Biden or Trump, just down-ballot conservatives.
I don't get the idea that either Biden or Harris are for either adding states or Supreme Court seats. But they don't want to say so on account of the Dems who are "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" over the Rs filling RBG's seat.
DeleteBut you're right about Puerto Rico at least being a possibility for a long time. I didn't know about Guam and the VI, but that's a fascinating idea. Not because I want to "pack" Congress, but just the interesting locales. I was enthusiastic about Hawaii entering the union when I was a grade school kid. Promised myself I would get there someday. Eventually I did.
Jean, interesting that your brother's not going for Trump.
DeleteI gave up trying to make sense of my brother's politics a long time ago. He is basically looking to blame government for his own failures in business and life.
DeleteJoe's last service to the country should be to change the expectations back to way before the Trump era. That would mean civilizing the Justice Department, letting the Pentagon think about war and not civil war games, listening to the intelligence agencies, getting the Post Office back to delivering mail, saving what can be saved of the 2020 census that Wilbur Ross stopped drooling long enough to turn into a zoo, encouraging government scientists (if any are left) to return to doing science, and the like. Picking a "because we can" fight with the Rs over the Supreme court would be a step in the wrong direction.
DeleteIf he could get Americans on speaking terms with each other again -- and I don't see his chances as being as good as 50-50 -- he will be a success.
Pope Francis says if he can't we are deservedly doomed anyway. If he wrote something that endorsed the Crime Family Trump as clearly as Fratelli Tutti endorses Biden, it would be all over the airwaves, you'd better believe. The brain dead Ds probably haven't heard about it.
I saw part of his condescending lecture to the Democrats about how eighth-grade civics (which I doubt is being taught anymore since we had a succession of Republican "education governors" pushing STEM über alles) would show them they shouldn't politicize Supreme Court nominees. I agree generally with the principle, but the pot was getting dirtier by the minute as he called the kettle black. Not to be taken seriously, young Ben.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, while Florida is represented in the Senate by Rick Scott, who was a crook ($1 billion+ in Medicare fraud) before he became governor, and a four-flusher as governor (it turned out the voter registration program he left crashed the computer the same way the workers comp program did) and is a whiney Trumpfeasor in the Senate. Not that he doesn't making more money from his public service. So I cannot vote for sanctimonious Ben in the Worst competition. He is Nebraska's problem.
Class case of a rat and a sinking ship.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans (elected and party officials and voters) have all made a pact with the devil by supporting Trump. They are going to find it very difficult to get out of that pact.
ReplyDeleteTrump’s real power is his connection to the most right wing elements of the party through twitter, those which are deeply critical of all establishments. That connection is not going to disappear when he is no longer president. He is going to continue to stir up trouble by bringing favorable attention to extremist positions. Any Republican officer holder or candidate is going to have to worry about crossing Trump on twitter and the extremists within their own party.
The Republican party like the Democrat party combines a bundle of separate interests, often labeled as “conservative”, e.g. financial, social, religious, constitutional, etc. Among those conservative interests (ever since the Republican party captured the South from the Democrats) has been the racial conservative interest of keeping White power in face of the fact that that Whites will in several decades cease to be the majority race just as Protestants have recently ceased to be our majority religion.
The great support of Evangelicals for Trump has to do with both issues. While the Republican base was mobilized for a couple of decades by the Evangelicals around religious and social conservatism, Trump has shown that it can be more effectively organized around racial issues, e.g. the end of immigration. Actually non-White immigrants from around the world usually have stronger family values and work ethics than native Americans, and those from South America are more strongly Christian. All those conservative values are ignored in preference to race and ethnicity.
Making American great again is making it White (preferably Protestant) again. It is interesting that the majority of Catholics and our Bishops are falling for this strategy even though Hispanics are the future of our Church and we have a Latin American Pope. Evangelicals, Conservative Catholics and our bishops have also made a pact with the devil of racism by supporting Trump from which they will find it very difficult to disentangle themselves.
"Any Republican officer holder or candidate is going to have to worry about crossing Trump on twitter and the extremists within their own party."
DeleteAnd that has been a thing all along. Trump's tweets are a "bully pulpit". People are afraid of his vitriol. And I'm not going to say they are wusses for that. It is very disheartening and demeaning to be a target. It is said that words can't hurt one, but in fact they can and do.