Ben Sasse is dying of pancreatic cancer
I have to admit, i’m a bit torn on this one. On the one hand, he is one of the few republicans to vote to impeach Trump. And my mother and grandfather both passed from pancreatic cancer, it’s rough.
On the other hand, Sasse tried to eliminate the ACA. Wanted to ban same sex marriage. Not to mention treating UF as his own personal piggybank while he was president.
So I guess on the balance I don’t wish him dead. But I’m not sure i’ll miss him when he goes.
That’s fair. At the risk of sounding cliche, I find myself saying “two things can be true at once” an awful lot these days. That’s not meant to be snarky toward you, @mozchron. Just a general reminder that we don’t have to twist ourselves up in knots if we feel some sympathy for otherwise unsympathetic people.
“Ben Sasse - Not as Bad as he Could Have Been”
I’ll say the same as I’ve said of other high-profile right-wing mortality… I don’t approve of how it happened, but I won’t pretend to be upset that they won’t be doing any more harm, nor getting rich off the harm they’re doing. I’ll never pretend to be sad about that.
He’s decreasing the surplus population.
I’m not sad about it, but also f*ck cancer.
IME Ben Sasse was one of the few sane Republicans in the Senate. “Sane” doesn’t mean I agreed with all his positions, it just means what it says – he was sane, as compared with many of the others or, God help us, the current orange-hued president or his sycophants.
I remember an interview with him where Bill Maher challenged him on the subject of climate change. Unlike most Republican doofuses, he didn’t deny the reality of it, but argued against the cost of mitigation. He was wrong, but to paraphrase PJ O’Rourke, he was wrong “within normal parameters”. He didn’t declare climate change to be “a Chinese hoax”. He was a fairly intelligent flag-bearer for his party’s positions.
This, so much this.
What Nebraska got as his replacement was our rotten to the core heartless former governor Pete Ricketts, who is now trumpifying the nation instead of just Nebraska. The terrifying thing is Ricketts is vastly smarter, craftier and more cunning than his orange idol and actually pulls off more of his populist schemes.
Light a candle for us down below.
I used to refer to Sasse as the Wannabe Philosopher King. His wordy, self-important ramblings - including his moralizing book - sounded lofty, but always still ended in the same places: defunding Planned Parenthood, overriding Obergefell, and expecting people to lift themselves up by their bootstraps.
He did argue against Trump, but that just puts him in the same boat as the GOP members I despised a decade ago. It’s hard to muster much positive feeling for him, more his kids and family.
He left the Dumpster Administration to be a college president, and then left THAT job to care for his disabled wife.
He resigned during Biden’s tenure.
My Alma mater. The college newspaper did a real fine job exposing his graft.