Sunday, September 22, 2019

Has Ben Sasse put a dent in his integrity? I'm not convinced

Charlie Sykes is. He's written a piece for the Think page at the NBC News website (which has given an airing to some pretty stinky leftist views; the editors were no doubt salivating at the chance to have Sykes beat up on a Republican). He hangs his argument on three somewhat narrow points of substantiation, though: the national-emergency vote in the Senate, the low profile Sykes claims that Sasse has been keeping since earlier this year, and Trump's endorsement of him.

But right now I'm listening to Sasse converse with Jonah Goldberg on the latter's podcast, and he sounds like the Ben Sasse I've always dug. Banter laced with salty humor. An understanding of heartland concerns. He says he has been very careful not to solicit Trump's endorsement ("I carefully kept the conversation going because I intentionally didn't want to think I'd ask for that") and how he took a pass on co-chairing the Very Stable Genius's reelection campaign. His explanation of his emergency-declaration vote satisfies me.

I basically resonate with where Sykes comes from, but I think he sometimes goes as overboard with looking for deviations from someone's stance of finding Trump objectionable as Trumpists do with looking for deviations from an insistence that he is the nation's savior from the Left.

Am I reading all this right?

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