11
votes
Sen. Ben Sasse reveals five point plan to address ethics issues in DC
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- Title
- My new reform plan will drain Democratic and Republican ethics swamp: Sen. Ben Sasse
- Word count
- 916 words
I mean, I guess I'll wait and see what happens legislatively, but I find myself pretty much on board with all five points, ignoring the necessary branding to say to the reader "this is a conservative speaking." The ethics in politics has needed law to fill in the gaps where the trust in the institutions no longer exists, and I think this does a fine enough job getting started.
Sasse strikes me as one of the few conservatives who has at least tried to stick to their principles in the Trump era. If the Democrats were smart they'd work with Sasse & the other handful of R's with morals to make this a reality (as opposed to their relatively weak-tea previous rebranding in this direction) after they win back the house.
All of the above is pretty much why I expect something like this to fail ignominiously however. A proposal like this needs to have huge publicity, to the point where people are questioning why their legislators aren't supportive of this bill; not an op-ed in USA today that doesn't even mention the name of the bill for us to follow. Perhaps if Sasse keeps on about it, or even primaries Trump in 2020 with this as the center of his platform. I guess we'll wait and see.
Yeah, I think this is one of those too-good-to-be-true things until I see more actual action to back it up. If Trump supports it (though I'm sure he'll say something that contradicts his support whether he's reliably behind it or not), if Sasse is releasing this ahead of the election to put fire on his Republican colleagues to support it, I can see this being a really good thing for democracy, let alone Republicans or Democrats.
This is clearly an early stage proposal. But that he's targeting legislative goals publicly and early into the process gives me a little hope that there might be a little more bark here than from the average lofty goals of lone senators.
I knew I had seen Senator Ben Sasse's name before...
Slate: "The Wasted Mind of Ben Sasse"
This article suggests that Sasse is long on talk and short on action.
This is a great start, but I still think we'd be better off if all elections were publicly funded and private donations of all kinds forbidden by law.
Seems like a desperate attempt at whataboutism on Sasse's part, to counter the recent push from Democrats on anti-corruption messaging.
"Sure, Trump is corrupt, but so was Hillary! Member her emails?"
If Sasse actually wanted to put his money where his mouth is on this, he could announce he's voting no to confirm Brett Kavanaugh unless Trump releases his tax returns. Won't happen, of course, because confirming conservative Supreme Court justices was a huge part of the reason the Republican never-Trump coalition fell in line.
The tl;dr of Sasse's opinion here seems to be that if you're angry about corruption, you should keep voting for whatever incumbent Republican you've got in your district already, because they promise they'll fix it...later. Not now. They're busy with other things now. But later, definitely later, it'll get fixed. For sure.
Actually, it's one of those shameful Republican attempts to steal the glory of, and undermine, a better proposal from the opposing party.
I'm going to hold my breath for meaningful anti-corruption legislation until a bill has sponsors from both parties.
Sasse is definitely running in 2020, from the looks of it.