The Nebraska Republican Party accused Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) Saturday of not representing his constituents in a formal rebuke that didn’t go as far as a full-on censure resolution.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, the GOP state committee formally accused Sasse of failing to represent his constituents, including not taking “any meaningful steps” on immigration reform, not fighting “back against the widespread censorship of conservative voices on public platforms,” and for relying on the legislation of others to advance his conservative credentials instead of forwarding his own legislative agenda.
The committee also accused Sasse of requesting and receiving the endorsement of President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 general election and then turning around to “criticize us for supporting” Trump once Sasse had won his second senatorial term in November.
Sasse has denied soliciting an endorsement from Trump ahead of the election. The Omaha World-Herald reports, citing Trump campaign staffers on the condition of anonymity, that Sasse’s team solicited a Trump endorsement prior to the election.
The GOP state committee did not issue a formal censure, and a spokesperson for Sasse dismissed the effort by party officials, some of whom the senator has criticized indirectly in the past.
“Ben’s won far more votes and also earned more censures than anybody in Nebraska history, so maybe the two actually go hand in hand,” Sasse spokesperson James Wegmen told CNN. “He doesn’t stick his finger in the wind.”
According to a copy of the resolution obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, the conclusion of the resolution reads: “Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Nebraska Republican Party Central Committee expresses its deep disappointment and sadness with respect to the service of Senator Ben Sasse and calls for an immediate readjustment whereby he represents the people of Nebraska to Washington and not Washington to the people of Nebraska and stands rebuked.”
Sasse was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, which ended in an acquittal in mid-February. Prior to the trial’s end, but after Sasse caught wind that the state GOP might consider a censure resolution against him, the Nebraska senator confronted unspecified members of the committee in a video statement.
As The Daily Wire previously reported:
“I’ve heard from many of you in the days since the attack on the Capitol threatening another censure for what I said about the president’s lies after the election. As a friend, and fellow Republican, I’m going to shoot straight: I’m not going to spend any time trying to talk you out of another censure. I listen to Nebraskans every day, and very few of them are as angry at life as some of the people on this committee. Not all of you, but a lot. Political addicts don’t represent most Nebraska conservatives,” said Sasse.
Sasse told the committee that “many” of them were upset because he condemned Trump’s “lies that led to a riot,” which he later emphasized “happened because the president lied to you.” When in office, said Sasse, Trump “lied about the election results for sixty days, despite losing sixty straight court challenges, many of them handed down by wonderful Trump-appointed judges. He lied by saying that the vice president could just violate his constitutional oath and declare a new winner — that wasn’t true. He then riled a mob that attacked the Capitol, many chanting, ‘hang Pence.’ If that president were a Democrat, we’d both know how you’d respond. But, because he had Republican behind his name, you’re defending him.”
“Something has definitely changed over the last four years, but it’s not me. Personality cults aren’t conservative. Conspiracy theories aren’t conservative. Lying that an election has been stolen, is not conservative. Acting that politics is a religion — it isn’t conservative,” he said.