Commentary: Mike Braun, Chasing Cars Again
By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS—U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana, and his fellow deep-thinking Republican colleagues in what once was the world’s greatest deliberative body are like dogs chasing cars.
They don’t understand quite why they’re doing it.
And they know even less what they would do if they succeeded in their quest.
Braun is one of 12 GOP senators who have signed on to an effort to delay President-elect Joe Biden from taking up residence in the White House. The members of this brain trust say they will oppose accepting electoral college results from key battleground states. They hope to keep defeated President Donald Trump in office.
With one exception, these senators, including Braun, are among that once-august chamber’s dimmest bulbs. One of the 12, an intellectual giant from Alabama named Tommy Tuberville, made national news because he couldn’t name the three branches of the federal government.
The one exception to the low-wattage capacity of this crew is Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Cruz is bright, but—to borrow Sam Houston’s epic condemnation of Jefferson Davis—the Texas senator is “ambitious as Lucifer.â€
And even less likable than that fallen angel.
Cruz’s fellow Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, once joked about Cruz’s winning personality.
“If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,†Graham said.
Part of what makes Cruz so charming is his willingness—no, eagerness—to sell out anyone, no matter how close to him, in service of his hunger to sit in the Oval Office.
He’s helping Trump maintain the delusion that he won the 2020 election. The Texas senator is carrying the flag for the president because Trump has been so kind to the Cruz family.
In 2016 GOP primaries, Trump accused Cruz’s father of being part of the plot to kill President John F. Kennedy. Then, for good measure, Trump said Cruz’s wife was ugly.
That’s right.
Donald Trump called Cruz’s father a murderer and insulted the man’s wife.
And Cruz’s response is to lick Trump’s boots and do his dirty work for him.
Those are some family values, huh?
Cruz at least has au understandable reason for signing on to this destructive fool’s errand. He made it clear long, long ago that he was willing to sell his soul—and at a discount—to climb the next rung on the ladder.
Lightweights like Braun are another story.
They’re doing it because they can’t seem to think of anything better—dealing with the pandemic, keeping Americans from losing their homes, etc.—to do with their time.
They reveal as much in the statement announcing their plans to obstruct the orderly transfer of power. They cite the “unprecedented allegations†of voter fraud in the presidential election.
The allegations in fact are unprecedented. Until now, senators who made allegations of crimes committed without proof faced censure.
Thus far, despite 60 lawsuits launched by Trump and his cronies and exhaustive recounts and investigations in all the battleground states, the only credible instances of voter fraud involve isolated schemes by Trump voters to have dead relatives cast ballots for their candidate.
The efforts of Cruz, Braun and the other members of their motley crew are likely to backfire.
Most immediately, they have made it much more difficult for Republicans to hold onto the two U.S. Senate seats—and thus control of the Senate—up for grabs in Georgia’s runoff election. Normally, a GOP victory in Georgia should be a sure thing, but Trump and his minions have turned those races into nail-biters.
If Cruz, Braun and their buddies cost Republicans the Senate, there won’t be much they can do to keep Biden and his fellow Democrats from pushing through their agenda.
Then there’s the larger problem Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, pointed out. Romney said this opens the door for any party to refuse to recognize any election outcome it doesn’t like.
And, last, there’s this. One way to eliminate the controversy and dismay over electoral votes in battleground states would be to have the winner of the presidency determined by popular vote.
Republicans have won the popular vote in presidential races exactly once since 1988.
But these are considerations only to people who think ahead.
Dogs chasing cars.
Ted Cruz, Mike Braun and company raising frivolous objections.
Same difference.
FOOTNOTE:  John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
The City-County Observer posted this article without opinion, bias, or editing.
Krull’s estimation of Braun is spot on. We used to send people like Richard Lugar, Vance Hartke and Birch Bayh to the Senate. Now comes Braun, decked out in his campaign blue jeans and readily joining the little cabal helping to enable Trump’s failing coup. Embarrassing. What that handful of senators are doing is seditious, Biden won the election by a lot. We like to have the voters pick our officeholders, not legislators like Braun.
Is Prof. Krull angling for a job at MSNBC? I’m sure there is no bias whatsoever in his “journalism” school.
No wonder liberals hate Trump so much for his America First agenda:
…………………………………..
Trump Reminded Us What It’s Like to Have an American President
It had been so long since we had an American president, many people had forgotten what it was and should be like. And after decades of anti-American, cultural Marxist indoctrination in American schools and popular culture, others thought it was a terrible thing. Neo-Dem Never-Trumper William Kristol tweeted: “I’ll be unembarrassedly old-fashioned here: It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim ‘America First.’â€
A foundation of the Democrats’ 2020 platform was the party’s vow to return America to its place in the world, i.e., to stop putting America First, and to go back to being the world’s beat cops and ATM. Now, however, after four years of Trump, some Americans see how the American president should put America first, and they’re not going to forget when Dotty Old Joe hits the White House basement, or when Kamala Harris moves her socialist, internationalist clown show into the Oval Office.
Yes, Trump was a braggart and a blusterer. Yes, he insulted people. Yes, he was often inarticulate. Yes, he showed none of the polish to which we have become accustomed from those who claim to be “experts†in how our government, and our daily lives, should be run. He was derided as an amateur, a non-expert, and he was: for some, that was one of the most important bases of his appeal. For Trump, unlike every other president going back to Reagan, and unlike most others before that going back to before Woodrow Wilson, dedicated his every act as president to putting Americans first and bettering their lives, and he wasn’t afraid to go against the conventional wisdom and decades of precedent to do so.
This often paid spectacular dividends. In June 2016, Barack Obama ridiculed Trump’s pledge to attract U.S. companies that had moved out of the country back to the United States, asking Trump, “What magic wand do you have?†Trump’s magic wand was an unprecedented initiative to cut regulations on businesses and drastically lower taxes.
It began to work immediately. Harry Moser of the Reshoring Initiative, which tracks jobs returning to the U.S. from companies that had relocated elsewhere, stated, “I’d say 300, 400 [companies], at least, announced in 2017†that they were returning. They brought jobs with them. In 2019, unemployment was at 3.5 percent, the lowest it had been since 1968. The Trump administration also set record lows for unemployment among blacks and Hispanics and record highs for the stock market. Trump proved the point that had been made in the 1920s and subsequently forgotten: lower taxes and fewer regulations mean that businesses can prosper, and when businesses prosper, so do the Americans whom they employ.
During the 2016 campaign, Trump called the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) “the worst trade deal ever made†and vowed to replace it. He did: in November 2018, he signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which mandated much more favorable terms for the United States than NAFTA did.
In foreign policy, though he was derided as “isolationist,†Trump brought about stunning and unprecedented peace deals between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco. John Kerry had smugly warned that no peace in the Middle East was possible without first setting up a Palestinian state and reducing an already tiny Israel; Trump once again proved the “experts†wrong….
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/01/03/trump-reminded-us-what-its-like-to-have-an-american-president-n1301270
“Fascism has indeed come to America and as was once predicted it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. This movement must be defeated. It cannot be appeased, accommodated or negotiated with. It must be recognized for what it is and we must all recognize the new age of American politics it has wrought,” he wrote.
“There are only two sides in American politics now. There is the American side and the Autocratic side. May God help us all if we falter, flag or fail in defense of American democracy.” – Steve Schmidt – A conservative, intelligent, patriotic Republican.
And yes, a rarity anymore.
But I guess when someone like Tommy Tuberville is elected a United States Senator and could not, (even to save his own life), name the three different branches of government, a sycophant like Braun will at least pass the smell test.
Not mine, but shar pie’s.
“No Doubt”….
Trump and a few of his deluded fanboys endlessly alleging fraud with no evidence to back it up does not itself constitute evidence of anything.
At some point, you have to provide some (any), proof to back up the allegations.
Braun is using ‘allegations’ in place of evidence. Braun is supporting the insupportable. This action is political garbage disguised as statesmanship.
I sent the following letter to Sen. Braun–And no, I don’t expect him to read it.
Sen. Braun,
Have you lost your mind? I am beginning to wonder.
1) You’ll never be president, thus you do not “need” the anti-America, deeply confused voters that Comrade Trump thinks he controls.
2) You won handily in your first election; thus, you don’t even need the right wing extremists in our state.
3) The Presidential election was handled fairly and transparently, regardless of the whining of the President and the false and unfounded claims of his “lawyers” and sycophants. 50+ courts, INCLUDING the US Supreme Court determined the election claims by Trump’s lawyers invalid and baseless.
4) The continued actions by Republicans and their fringe border on sedition and are considered treasonous by millions of Americans. Is that really the legacy you wish to leave? That you supported the end of democracy in America? Russia and China could not do more damage to the country than the GOP is doing right now.
5) I realize you are “conservative” and that we would probably disagree on many issues, but I never considered you to be an Un-American fool…that is until now.
Please reconsider and remove your name from the list of anti-democracy Senators who plan to side with traitor Hawley. Your previous legacy in Indiana and your initial years as a Senator will forever be tarnished with the blemish of being against the American founding ideas and democracy. Remember, for years and decades into the future, you will be known as one of the few who bought into the insanity of the current President and his foolish supporters. Remember too, the world has not forgotten the “Black Sox” Scandal in baseball, and they will not forget the scandalous action of your little cadre.
Lenny Dowhie
Professor Emeritus, USI
Small Business Owner
I like the way you begin your letter to the senator. I usually start my comments to him with “Senator, are you drunk?” Clearly, Braun is representing his constituents accurately though. That’s really unfortunate, as he is showing potential desirable employers that there are many better places to establish their firms.
Trump and his cronies complain about election fraud while Trump and his cronies were recorded in a telephone call attempting to suborn election fraud, threatening the Georgia secretary of state, a Republican, with criminal prosecution unless he should “find,†enough votes to swing the state’s election Trump’s way.
No one who has participated in this poisonous buffoonery should ever hold office again.
Agreed!
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