His video ricocheted around the Republican universe on Thursday and Friday night, not because he criticized Trump – as Sasse and other traditionalists did before – but because he so directly challenged Trump’s most ardent attitude supporters.
They constitute a huge base of Republican voters, causing fear in many party leaders. On the eve of Trump’s second impeachment trial – and even with the numbers of the former president’s polls within the Republican Party slightly falling – Sasse remains an isolated case in his willingness to denounce the president’s false allegations and other actions. This makes it a study in contrast to pro-Trumpers like Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, two other Republican presidential candidates who led the Senate’s objections to Joe Biden’s victory.
With his unshakable video, the senator from one of the country’s redest states is testing the limits of never-Trumpism in a post-Trump world.
“He’s the first guy to face grassroots activists in his own party in his own state,” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who worked to defeat Trump last year.
Sasse’s video, he said, was “a glass of cold water in people’s faces, saying ‘the fever is passing'”.
The video took the form of a direct response to members of the state central committee of the Republican Party of Nebraska, who censored Sasse in 2016 for not sufficiently supporting Trump – and who are considering several measures to censor him again later this month.
His act of defiance was slow to arrive. In early November, Sasse sharply criticized Trump’s effort to overturn the presidential election results. Last month, he called Hawley’s objection to certifying the Biden Electoral College victory as “really stupid.” In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal the morning of the deadly Capitol riot, he lamented “a society-wide addiction to crack and clickbait that treats politics as a bloody sport.” And in the aftermath of the insurrection, he blamed Trump directly.
The result for Sasse – like Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming and other Republicans who criticized the president – was a fierce attack from the base. Ryan Hamilton, the executive director of the Republican Party of Nebraska, said the party had received eight separate resolutions to censor Sasse and had received thousands of phone calls, emails and other messages expressing frustration with Sasse since his vote last week to allow the trial of Trump’s impeachment Move on.
At the state party offices, Hamilton said, “Our phone is exploding.”
Noting that Trump endorsed Sasse’s reelection candidacy despite his differences, Bruce Desautels, president of the Hitchcock County Republican Party, said Sasse “stabbed the president in the back”.
“The man is one of the most condescending, arrogant and narcissistic individuals I have ever had the unfortunate circumstance to deal with, to find,” said Desautels, whose county party is holding an emergency meeting on Saturday to consider a resolution to censor Sasse. “He doesn’t represent Republican values, as far as I’m concerned.”
In response to the discussion of censorship, Sasse began to draft a message, as he usually does, on a stack of 3 by 5 inch chips, according to a consultant. And when it came time to film, his media consultant, Fred Davis, said he would have “increased the Hollywood film a bit” or, at least, varied the angle of the shoot.
Sasse didn’t want that. Instead, according to the consultant, he went to a studio in Washington on Thursday, sat before a single camera on a tripod and spoke directly to her for just over five minutes.
“He wrote and rewrote and rewrote,” said Davis. “He really thought about it a lot.”
Recognizing that Sasse’s decision not to overproduce the video was the right one, Davis said: “It’s just honest. It has no flourish. He’s just telling you what he’s thinking. “
The political danger of Sasse’s thinking is, for the moment, obvious. On the same day he released his video, only 11 Republican members of the House joined the vote to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene, the pro-Trump, member of the House that plots conspiracies, from his duties on the committee. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans, although slightly below previous highs, is still around 80%.
In Nebraska, retribution for crossing Trump was swift. In Scotts Bluff County, a Trump stronghold where Republican Party activists have already approved Sasse’s censorship, Kolene Woodward, the county party chairman, said Sasse’s criticisms of Trump were not seen only as an accusation by Trump, but by Republicans loyal to him.
“He is repudiating 75 million people who voted for Trump,” she said. “That’s my problem with that … These ideals and the things we wanted are still on the table.”
Mary Jane Truemper, president of Omaha Liberty Ladies, a conservative group of women, said the video was “deaf and condescending”. And Hal Daub, a former Republican congressman from Omaha, said that while he thinks that censoring Sasse before voting on the impeachment itself is “premature”, Sasse’s video “was a bit much.”
A Republican strategist in Nebraska said that even if Sasse is anticipating a drop in support for Trump over the next four years, it is likely to remain a slice of the presidential constituency that will view allegiance to Trump as a litmus test. In a crowded primary, this could have potentially debilitating ramifications for Trump critics like Sasse.
Sasse’s political prospects rest on a broader view of the Republican Party – and an uncertain bet that he will eventually move away from Trump. Sasse will not be re-elected until 2026. And the presidential primaries, despite the initial maneuvers that are already underway, will not start for real until after the midterm elections next year.
In addition, the party apparatus may not be as significant an obstacle for Sasse as the censorship headlines may seem. The influence of state party operations has waned in recent years, a decline accelerated by the explosion of social media for messaging and fundraising for small dollars.
And the party is now more malleable than ever – more often reforming to reflect its candidates than bending them at will. Trump was insulted by many state party officials before remaking the party in his image. Sasse himself defeated a party veteran who tried to put him in the primaries last year, defeating Matt Innis with 75 percent of the vote. Innis, a loyal to Trump, was a former Republican Party president in Lancaster County, Nebraska.
For most Republicans – “people who aren’t addicted to politics” – said Ryan Horn, a Republican media strategist based in Omaha, “I think most conservative voters will look at this and give you credit for it. “
In November, Sasse won more votes in Nebraska than Trump. And between that and the video, Horn said, “I think what he did is important.”
“I think he’s demonstrating that if you have voters on your side, you don’t need to be intimidated by certain types of activists who want to do silly things, like censoring Cindy McCain in Arizona or censoring Ben Sasse in Nebraska,” he said. “It’s almost as if some of these people have gone out of their way to spot the most successful voters.”