Posted on 03/24/2014 7:54:36 AM PDT by cotton1706
With every big name in national Tea Party politics lined up behind Ben Sasse in the Nebraska Republican Senate primary, a disinterested observer could be forgiven for assuming that Shane Osborn was some GOP Establishment today.
Except, that’s not the case. Osborn, a Navy veteran who was once captured and interrogated by the Chinese military for several days, served one term as the elected Nebraska treasurer, stepping down in 2011 rather than run for re-election. He has never lived in Washington aside from a 15-month assignment to the Navy Yard following his final deployment to Afghanistan.
Osborn moved home to Nebraska in May 2005 after being honorably discharged from the Navy. An early critic of the legislation that became Obamacare, he became a regular fixture at local Tea Party rallies protesting President Obama's health care overhaul. Later, as state treasurer, Osborn implemented a host of fiscal reforms.
With a resume like that, some political observers are perplexed by the conservative Establishment’s consensus endorsement of Sasse in the Senate primary.
Sasse, who still owns a home in Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington, served in former President George W. Bush's Health and Human Services Department. He lived in D.C. for a few years in the late 1990s, and from 2001 to 2009. But that Establishment pedigree hasn't deterred Tea Party groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund, and conservative icons like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, from backing Sasse, who has run a small liberal arts college in eastern Nebraska since returning home.
Some Republicans monitoring the Senate primary suspect that Washington’s Tea Party community couldn’t resist playing in Nebraska. The deep-red state is sure to elect a Republican this fall, and with the seat being open, conservatives have an opportunity to influence the outcome for a relatively minimal investment.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
A Tea Party Candidate with some back bone is who I would vote for in Nebraska.
“Osborn’ is 100% PURE GOP-e/Rino. Therefor he would be Mitch McConnell’s BITCH! Sasse is PURE Tea Party!
Tom Osborn was the Nebraska Cornhuskers’ famed long term football coach. I wonder a bit if they could be related.
Did they mean "toady" ?
Oops, Cornhuskers make the wrong choice ad nauseum. So many there are truly establishment people.
“Shane Osborn was some GOP Establishment today
Did they mean “toady” ?”
Yes, I think so haha.
Not related
I’m voting for Sasse.
Oops, Cornhuskers make the wrong choice ad nauseum. So many there are truly establishment people. I hope they will take a chance on Sasse.
Absolutely Ben Sasse!
He’s the only candidate nation-wide to rise from nothing to top contender primarily on one issue: Anti-Obamacare.
He’s also the guy who first put the “Barack-ets” together showing Obama’s failures and crimes in basketball pairing brackets, which shows a level of gutsiness seldom seen from candidates other than those from states ending in “aska”!
Osborne is the Establishment candidate.
He would be another vote in the Senate for the RINO’s.
“Easy answer: whoever will vote against Mitch McConnell for leader, and that’s Ben Sasse.”
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Amen!! Ben Sasse is the TRUE conservative and is not the GOPe’s designated “conservative”. We should no longer trust the GOPe; nor should we trust the faux “conservatives” they try to push on us.
I’ll go with Sasse. Osborn’s campaign has all but used the Chinese incident to indicate that the candidate is a “hero” for his actions in that situation. He actions were not particularly heroic. He did his job, was said to be cool under pressure and handled everything well but none of that is heroic. If they were just saying that he is cool and composed under pressure there would be no issue but they use all the visuals of the incident all of the time in the ads. This is why he’s receiving blowback. And, yes, he is a GOPe pick.
Tom Osborne spells his name differently, so I doubt it.
Do you by any chance know who Ben Sasse’s parents and grandparents are? I used to live in Fremont And I had a gym teacher with a last name of Sasse and there was an Elmer Sasse who worked at Midland College. For some reason I seem to think that Mr. Sasse at Fremont Junior high may have had a young son named Ben.
Sorry, I don’t.
I live in a rural area between Omaha and Lincoln. Know some folks from Fremont, but no one named Sasse. Until I heard Ben.
Have you been away from here long?
Yes I have been away a long time but I still have a brother in Lincoln. My brother knows people who know Ben Sasse and he said he would ask them.
I looked up Elmer Sasse and found his obituary and it states that he has a Son named Gary. My former gym teacher’s name is Gary Sasse. Related? I don’t know. I did find that Ben Sasse is a grand son of Elmer Sasse. My mother will be excited to hear that. She is a die hard conservative tea party republican. She said that Elmer was a very nice man and not snooty like a lot of the other elites at Midland college.
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