Great News: We Won't Have Ben Sasse to Kick Around Anymore
Some days you get good news, even with a mentally-addled old weirdo pretending to be president.
Today is such a day, with the news that the University of Florida is about to end the political career of smarmy Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse. See, UF needs a new President, and for some inexplicable reason, officials there have landed on the RINO Senator as their hire.
Cool! How can we speed this process up?
Welp, if this report at NBC News is to be believed - always a crap shoot, I admit - there isn’t much speeding up necessary, as events are anticipated to move quite quickly from here.
Here’s an excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., who frequently clashed with former President Donald Trump but won a second term in 2020, is expected to resign before the end of the year, a source familiar with the move confirmed Thursday.
Sasse is expected to leave the Senate to take a job leading the University of Florida, the source said. Sasse and the university confirmed that he is in talks for the top job there after news broke Thursday.
[End]
Readers here will remember, of course, that Sasse has been one of the leading critics of Donald Trump, both while he was serving as president and as he has challenged the outcome of the 2020 elections. Sasse’s rhetoric has often seemed to parrot that of Liz Cheney, and has provided a steady stream of anti-Trump messaging to be pushed by the corrupt news media.
Here’s another excerpt from the NBC story, which naturally capitalizes on some of the Sasse statements because of course it does:
Sasse won re-election in 2020, and his term is set to expire in 2027. Sasse has been at odds with Trump and his own party for years. As Trump ran for re-election in 2020, Sasse unloaded on him, saying Trump "kisses dictators' butts," "flirted with white supremacists," disparages women, “mocks evangelicals behind closed doors" and "treats the presidency like a business opportunity."
After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Sasse was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump for his role in the deadly riot. He specifically faulted Trump for intimidating election officials and repeatedly lying about widespread election fraud and the outcome of the 2020 election.
“Those lies had consequences, endangering the life of the vice president and bringing us dangerously close to a bloody constitutional crisis," Sasse said at the time. "Each of these actions are violations of a president’s oath of office.”
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Truly, with RINOs like Ben Sasse in the Senate, who would ever need Democrats? We all owe a debt of gratitude to the University of Florida for putting an end to his deceit and disloyalty, since the voters in Nebraska were too clueless to do so in the 2020 elections.
Sasse’s pending resignation won’t change the current 50/50 balance in the Senate, since his successor will be appointed by Republican Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts. The Omaha World Herald speculated in a Thursday story that Gov. Ricketts might well appoint himself to fill the job, given that he ran for it unsuccessfully in 2006:
With Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse seemingly ready to accept a big job in academia and resign his seat, one big question swirled through Nebraska politics Thursday.
Does Gov. Pete Ricketts want Sasse’s job?
And that fundamental question in turn leads to others:
If so, would he consider appointing himself to the Senate?
Could the choice slide to GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Pillen, who if elected to succeed Ricketts in November would be in position in January to appoint his strongest political supporter to the seat?
Or could either Ricketts or Pillen choose a placeholder, an experienced political hand who would hold the seat until it could be filled in an open special election in 2024?
While Ricketts had little to say Thursday, a number of longtime Republican activists and political observers believe Ricketts is likely to ultimately want the job he sought unsuccessfully in 2006.
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Interestingly, though, Ricketts’ ability to make the appointment depends on the timing of Sasse’s resignation from the Senate. The Governor’s office is up for grabs in the November elections, and Ricketts is not a candidate for it since he is term-limited. If Sasse doesn’t resign until after the first of the year, when the new governor will be sworn in, the appointment would fall to Ricketts’ successor, likely to be GOP candidate Jim Pillen.
Regardless of who happens to be governor at the time, that person would have 45 days from the date of Sasse’s resignation to name the appointee. Depending on the outcome of the November elections, the party affiliation of that appointee could well determine the balance of power in the Senate.
High stakes here. We should all wish Sasse great and long-lasting success in his new job at UF, if only because that would preclude him from ever holding high political office again.
That is all.