“Sorry, Mr. President, But My True Conservatism Doesn’t Mean Stopping Democrats.”

You don’t have to spend much time speculating on how the Indiana Senate dropped the ball yesterday.

One of my favorite quips, whenever we get stabbed in the back by Republicans from places like Utah or Indiana, is to say, “When I die, I want six professional Republicans to carry my casket; that way, they can let me down one last time.”

Indiana’s Senate didn’t just let me down yesterday - they let the entire American people down. I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but I did spend a year of my life connecting dots on insurgent networks in Afghanistan when I was baby-faced lieutenant in my mid-20s. Let me consult my crystal ball and see if I can figure out if there is anyone with an axe to grind against the President’s agenda in the Hoosier State…

Oh, yes. The Vice President who fell back on his canned statements about principle when certifying a corrupt election that not only ended Trump’s presidency, but his own term as the second most powerful man in the United States. Do I have a smoking gun that attaches Mike Pence to the 31-19 vote in the Indiana Senate yesterday that ensured Democrats will have 2 of Indiana’s 9 U.S. House seats - instead of being locked out completely in a state Trump won by almost 19 points?

No.

But let’s be realistic - state political kingpins maintain power through their proxies long after their own time in office has come and gone. The Bush machine in Texas is alive and well almost 17 years after Dubya packed it up and went back to Crawford. They’ve used people like Dade Phelan to advance an incredibly weak agenda for what is thought to be one of the most “from my cold, dead hands” states there is. Then you have the Paul Ryan apparatus in Wisconsin, which still exerts enough pressure to convince candidates like Eric Hovde, robbed of a U.S. Senate seat down ballot from Trump last fall, to drop his challenge out of thin air for the promise of greener pastures in the future. Don’t even get me started on Mitt Romney’s cabal of weaklings in Utah who bring their “decency” to Capitol Hill.

Do you want to know why this reeks of Mike Pence?