Indiana conservatives just sent a message to RINOs everywhere: FAFO. These voters are mad as hell and they’re not going to vote for spineless Republicans anymore.
Hopefully GOP senators performing in the failure theater production of “debating” the SAVE America Act heard Indiana’s message loud and clear.
Most of the Republican Indiana state Senate candidates endorsed by President Donald Trump won primary races Tuesday against incumbents who voted with Democrats to stop a congressional redistricting bill. As of late Tuesday evening, The New York Times election results showed challengers picked up at least five of the seven state Senate seats targeted by Trump and allied conservatives groups. Republican primary voters rejected politicians standing on “fairness” principles while Democrats employ every weapon in their political arsenal to wrest back control of the U.S. House.
Indiana Sen. Jim Banks helped drive the campaign to oust the incumbents who helped kill a mid-decade redrawing of the red state’s congressional maps. The redistricting plan, urged by Trump, would have given Republicans two additional seats in a House of Representatives with a razor-thin GOP majority.
“Everyone in Indiana politics should have learned an important lesson today: President Trump is the single most popular Republican among Hoosier voters,” Banks said in a statement. “Indiana is a conservative state, and we deserve conservatives in our State Senate who have a pulse on Republican voters.”
Trump and his political action committee allies are ready to spend to jettison Republicans who don’t see the next two election cycles as existential battles. And they have a lot of money to take on RINOs and leftists heading into the midterms.
The Indiana Senate Republican primaries generated $13.5 million in ad spending, a 4,736 percent increase from the last cycle, according to ad tracker AdImpact. The brunt of the spending poured in from Trump-allied groups targeting the incumbents.
It seems some members of Republican-controlled U.S. Senate have failed to learn that “important lesson,” particularly when it comes to one of Trump’s top priorities — an 80-20 issue among voters.
‘I’m Disappointed’
The Senate is out this week. Again. Majority leadership could be fighting for the SAVE America Act, holding the floor open for debate until enough obstructionist Democrats break. They’re not. Even when they’re in session they haven’t shown much urgency for the popular election integrity package that requires documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections, and photo ID at the polls.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said he supports the bill but, by golly, there’s just no way to get around that 60-vote filibuster. There is, but it seems the same senators who like to talk about election integrity don’t want to work all that hard to get it. See: Talking Filibuster.
Trump has called on Republicans to use the “nuclear option,” as Democrats did more than a decade ago, to blow up the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act and other key conservative measures. Thune has said nuking the filibuster is a nonstarter in his conference. Republicans are worried about what Democrats might do with the power when they’re back in control.
Trump warned that if Democrats “get the chance, they’ll do it in the first hour back.”
“I’m disappointed. I like John a lot, but there’s a couple of Republicans that are foolish people,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. “A couple of them I like, a couple of them I can’t stand.”
‘After Careful Consideration’
Indiana’s primary election should be a wake-up call to Thune and crew about what happens to politicians when the Republican Party’s most popular politician is disappointed.
Looking at you Sen. John Cornyn. The Texas RINO whom sources say has been extra squishy on getting the SAVE America Act across the finish line, is trailing his challenger in the Lone Star State’s runoff election. A poll released this week by Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston shows Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton leading the incumbent by 3 percentage points (48% to 45%).
Feeling the heat from Paxton, Cornyn changed his stance on the Senate security blanket.
“After careful consideration, I support whatever changes to Senate rules that may prove necessary for us to get the SAVE America Act and homeland security funding past the Democrats’ obstruction, through the Senate, and on the president’s desk for his signature,” Cornyn wrote in a March op-ed in The New York Post.
But saying so and doing so when the rubber hits the road are two distinctly different things, as politics past has shown us. Congressional sources say Cornyn and others are loathe to go on the record with an actual vote on the subject.
Some Senate Republicans needed a reminder that Trump’s endorsement and his displeasure still matter a great deal in the Trump era.
Get the Message?
A total of 21 Republicans in the Indiana state Senate joined its 10 Democrats in stopping the Hoosier State redistricting plan. Only some are up for election this year. After the December vote, Republican state Sen. Sue Glick told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that voters didn’t want the new map, and that Hoosiers “can’t be bullied.”
Democrats and their corporate media comrades rejoiced, calling it a GOP rejection of Trump and his agenda.
While Indiana RINOs joined with state Democrats in calling the redistricting plan unfair and cynical, Dems have pushed gerrymandered maps in California, Utah, and Virginia to greater political advantage. Virginia liberals ran a rigged referendum campaign to change the commonwealth’s constitution and rewrite a map that would — if it survives court challenges — give Democrats a 10-1 edge in Virginia’s congressional delegation. Liberals in New York and Wisconsin tried and failed to draw new boundaries, but House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is back with another plan to further gerrymander the Empire State.
If the past is any indicator, Democrats will do whatever it takes — legal and otherwise — to take back power. We have seen this movie before. That’s why passage of the SAVE America Act is so critical to the integrity of U.S. elections.
It’s time Thune and crew got that message.
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
