Comments on Toomey by Washington County GOP chairman go viral
Peters Township councilman Dave Ball appeared on CNN Tuesday after making comments a day earlier about U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s vote to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Ball
Larry Stratton
Dave Ball, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party and a Peters Township councilman, was probably one of the most widely seen and quoted men in America Tuesday.
Ball’s notoriety followed comments he made Monday to KDKA-TV political analyst Jon Delano, denouncing the vote by U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. In a discussion on resolutions censuring Toomey that Washington County Republicans and other GOP county organizations in Southwestern Pennsylvania have put forward, Ball said of Toomey, “We did not send him there to vote his conscience, we did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”
Ball’s comments went viral, and were a staple of Twitter, were included in stories in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, The Hill and other publications, were shown on CNN, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and ABC-TV’s “The View,” and was the quote of the day on the Political Wire website.
The reaction on social media and by some commentators was overwhelmingly negative. Commenters on Twitter said his remarks were “anti-American,” “madness” and “an embarrassment.”
When reached Tuesday, Ball said that he “should have been clearer in the message I was trying to convey.”
“I used those terms in the sense of not departing from the Constitution and applying his personal dislike for the president,” Ball explained. “His personal dislike for the president is longstanding.”
And, no, Ball does not believe Toomey’s vote to convict Trump was “the right thing.”
“The trial was unconstitutional,” he said, pointing to the fact that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts did not preside, and impeachment could not be applied to a private citizen, which Trump became on Jan. 20.
Ball also said that the votes of most senators and congressmen are “carefully calibrated to constituent opinions.”
“Do I believe senators should vote based on the opinions of party members in their home states? Apparently they do, because they spend a lot of money polling their constituents prior to important votes, and periodically to gauge sentiment on issues,” Ball said. “If they do this, they must know that they have an obligation to represent the desires of their constituents.”
Toomey was one of seven Republican senators voting to convict Trump for inciting a Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol that led to five deaths. He was joined by Susan Collins of Maine, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mitt Romney of Utah, who also voted to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial. Before the trial, Toomey and Burr had already announced that they were not running for reelection when their terms expire next year.
A spokesman for Toomey declined to offer a response to Ball’s comments or the efforts to censure the senator. Instead, he referred to remarks Toomey made at the trial’s conclusion Saturday, when he said, “I did what I thought was right, and I would certainly like to think that regardless of my political circumstances or whether I was running for office again or not, I would do the same thing.”
As for the reaction of his fellow Republicans in Pennsylvania, Toomey said, “Look, Pennsylvanians are divided on this, I’m sure. I recognize that a majority of Republicans will probably disagree with this decision.” And while Toomey praised some of the Trump administration’s “terrific successes,” he also said that the former president’s behavior after the Nov. 3 election was “unacceptable.”
Larry Stratton, an associate professor of ethics and constitutional law at Waynesburg University, said he was “troubled” by Ball’s comments. Stratton pointed to an observation made by Edmund Burke, the 18th century Irish statesman and conservative philosopher, that “your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment.”
Ball’s comments “only exacerbate the polarization in the country right now,” Stratton added.
Christina Proctor, who leads the Washington County Democratic Party, said her party “likes to find candidates that not only have a conscience, but do the right thing.”
Washington County has joined Republican organizations in Fayette, Westmoreland and York counties in censuring Toomey. The state party may also censure Toomey. The censure resolution approved by the Washington County GOP takes Toomey to task for first voting that the impeachment trial was constitutional, and then voting to convict Trump.
It states that Toomey “has made clear his personal disregard for both former President Trump and the Republican Party.” Ball said it was the first time, to his knowledge, the Washington County Republican Party has censured anyone, and was done with the “overwhelming support” of the leadership team.