Sen Ben Sasse won't back Donald Trump over Joe Biden, says 'no Congress Republican feels elections were fraud'
With January 6 fast approaching, the Republican Party’s internal woes look to be piling on fast, so much so that an implosion is not unlikely. It is all centered around the party’s division over challenging the Electoral College (EC) voting last month that cemented the victory of Democrat Joe Biden over incumbent President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday, December 31, clearly expressed his disagreement with those fellow party senators who are plotting to disrupt the Congressional voting on January 6 to affirm the EC votes in favor of Biden.
'No GOP Congress member feels 2020 polls were fraudulent'
There are also other GOP senators who are not happy with the plot and among them is Nebraska lawmaker Ben Sasse, one of the most prominent Never Trumper faces in the party. On Wednesday, December 30, Sasse came up with a long post on Facebook in which he said that he will not be a part of the plan to object to the EC vote counts next Wednesday on January 6. In the post titled ‘WHAT HAPPENS ON JANUARY 6th’, Sasse hit out at those plotting against Biden’s win in the legislature as “institutional arsonist members of Congress”. He even said not a single Republican member in the Congress claims during private discussions that the 2020 election results were fraudulent. “Instead, I hear them talk about their worries about how they will "look" to President Trump's most ardent supporters,” the 48-year-old senator said.
He also tweeted the same Facebook link saying: “Why I Will Not Participate in a Project to Overturn the Election”
Why I Will Not Participate in a Project to Overturn the Election: https://t.co/z8niiPle3q
— Senator Ben Sasse (@SenSasse) December 31, 2020
Earlier in the same day, Missouri GOP Senator Josh Hawley said he would file objections alongside some other House Republicans on January 6 when Vice President Mike Pence goes through the EC vote tallies. Pence has found himself under immense pressure from the president to overturn the election results at the joint Congressional session even though Trump’s advisors have told him repeatedly that the vice president doesn’t have much to do in this regard apart from mere ceremonial functionalities.
Trump and his loyalists have been still trying to reverse the results of the November election which Biden won by more than seven million votes and by an EC vote margin of 306-232. They have been claiming that the election was marred by voter fraud and some of the president’s sympathizers have even gone to the extreme of asking him to suspend the Constitution and ask the military to hold fresh polls. The president has also asked his supporters to assemble in Washington DC on January 6 to protest the allegedly compromised election.
Sasse, who is one of Trump’s most vocal critics among GOP members on Capitol Hill, spoke over the president’s campaign’s court cases in each state and explained why some reported instances of fraud would fail to turn the tables around. “I started with the courts for a reason. From where I sit, the single-most telling fact is that there a giant gulf between what President Trump and his allies say in public – for example, on social media, or at press conferences outside Philadelphia landscaping companies and adult bookstores – and what President Trump’s lawyers actually say in courts of law," Sasse wrote. Sasse speaks from the experience of having served as the assistant secretary of health and human services for planning and evaluation under the George W Bush presidency.
The lawmaker, who won his re-election in November, said while there is no legal penalty for misleading people, there is one for doing the same with judges. “[T]he president’s lawyers know that – and thus they have repeated almost none of the claims of grand voter fraud that the campaign spokespeople are screaming at their most zealous supporters,” Sasse wrote in his post.
“So, here’s the heart of this whole thing: this isn’t really a legal strategy – it’s a fundraising strategy,” he added.
'Ambitious politicians who think there's a quick way to tap into president's populist base'
Explaining his GOP colleagues’ motivations to challenge Biden’s win, Sasse wrote: “Let’s be clear what is happening here: We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there's a quick way to tap into the president's populist base without doing any real, long-term damage.”
He said those politicians were wrong in their thinking and called the issue to be bigger than people’s personal ambitions. “Adults don’t point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government,” Sasse said, targeting the pro-Trump plotters in the GOP. Just one senator is required to trigger a debate in the House and Senate and then a vote for each state the lawmakers claim they have a problem with. A simple majority is required to quash the objection.
McConnell has asked fellow GOP senators to stay away from the effort to disrupt Biden’s win because he thinks the party will be at a disadvantage in the long term as a result of such a strategy. The veteran Kentucky lawmaker said in a conference call with fellow GOP members that his vote to certify Biden’s victory in the presidential election will be “the most consequential I have ever cast”.