They may give Hoosier Democrats a fighting chance to be relevant once more.
Trump and Braun now are happily engaged in a demolition project, tossing hand grenades and other high explosives willy-nilly into the GOP camp, while they gleefully set Indiana Republicans at each other’s throats. Like small children who have been left alone to play with dangerous, dangerous toys, the president and his lapdog governor seem blissfully unaware of the damage they’re doing to their own party and even their own interests.
But they are doing the GOP a lot of damage.
In his quest to rig the electoral maps ahead of next year’s congressional elections and thus evade scrutiny and perhaps investigation into some of his seedier actions, Trump is forcing a hard choice on Hoosier Republicans. Polls—both independent and Republican—reveal that Hoosiers are about as enthusiastic about the president’s redistricting push to save his own rear as they would be about a return of the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indiana Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, is about as right-wing as it is possible to be and a devout member of the secular church of MAGA. She’s been telling interviewers, though, that 94% of the voters in her heavily Republican district oppose Trump’s gerrymandering push.
Yet, the president is leaning on Leising and other Indiana Senate Republicans to defy the will of their constituents and demonstrate abject subservience to him.
That’s the classic definition of a lose-lose proposition for an Indiana lawmaker, many of whom realize that they will have to answer to these voters long after Trump has left the White House.
Other, savvier presidents might have proved more persuasive by figuring out ways to help lawmakers explain their support for his half-cocked notion to their constituents that made it seem like they secured something—a new bridge, more federal funding for a hospital or school—for their district in return for their vote.
But Trump’s only means of persuasion seems to be making threats about finding and funding primary challengers or withholding federal funding here in the state.
The first threat rings more than a little hollow with primary day less than six months away—and with multi-billionaire Elon Musk no longer eager to open his checkbook in service of the president’s political feuds.
The second threat, given Trump’s decision to strip funding and services for large swaths of rural America, also doesn’t carry the sting it might have.
What this means is that the president is asking—no, demanding—that Hoosier legislators run big political risks for him while offering the lawmakers and their constituents nothing in return.
Whichever way this fight ends, those senators will remember the choice this president forced upon them.
Then there’s Gov. Mike Braun.
Our governor clearly aced the obedience portion of presidential puppy school. He’s not only willing but eager to beg, fetch and, most important, roll over whenever Trump asks him to.
Despite repeated warnings from Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, that there weren’t enough votes in the chamber to pass Trump’s power grab, Braun first unilaterally called for a special session and then, after the Senate shut him down, has demanded that Republican senators take a vote on the record showing whether they’re going to honor their constituents’ wishes or defy a president they support on 99.9% of other issues.
Once again, a lose-lose proposition forced on them by their own governor.
They will remember that, too.
Unsophisticated political observers have asked why Indiana Democrats have remained relatively silent during this Republican family feud.
The answer to that question is simple.
When one’s opponents are engaged in a campaign of implosion and self-destruction, the best thing to do is just stand back and let the process run its course.
Right now, Indiana Democrats don’t have to waste time, energy and money trying to do damage to Hoosier Republican officeholders and candidates and the Indiana GOP.
That’s what President Donald Trump and Gov. Mike Braun are doing for them.
All Hoosier Democrats should do is send the president and the governor thank-you notes.
