Students from the University of Florida (Gators) showed up to protest against the installation of Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse as their university president.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, “the protesters made five demands. They wanted Sasse to decline the president’s job and the UF board of trustees to release the names — thus far withheld — of all 12 people they had interviewed for the post. They also demanded more transparency during the selection process and the repeal of a new Florida law that makes presidential searches at state colleges and universities largely secret.” (more)
Everyone in Florida knows Governor Ron DeSantis cleared the field for his friend Senator Ben Sasse. As noted by Politico: “Sasse’s sherpa through the university search process was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff James Uthmeier, who was put in contact with Sasse several months ago after he quietly expressed interest in becoming UF president.“ (link)
Senator Sasse is a never Trumper reelected in 2020 and his term doesn’t expire until 2026. Sasse is expected to depart this year and the Nebraska governor will make an appointment to fill his senate seat.
…”Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts would then appoint a replacement for Sasse under state law, with the seat then up for a special election in 2024. One of the people familiar with Sasse’s plans said Ricketts himself is viewed as a potential appointee for the seat.”
I’m glad he’s getting a warm reception from the UF kids. These rinos will try and endear themselves to the populace and it always ends up backfiring spectacularly. Anybody hear from Mittens lately?😀
Mittens will be trotted out soon. They rotate and when the heat gets too much for the current camera hog they trot out one we have not seen in a while. Then it will be Pelosi, AOC, the squad, McDonnell, Chaney, then back to Sasse. The entire nightmare will start over again..
Now we need to find colleges for Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowsky.
You can bet it’s not because he’s a RINO, hell most don’t have a clue what that means.
In the past if you had a parent that was an alum it helped your child get accepted, not so much anymore, seems that it’s more on the alum’s donations.
Mittens is busy trying to defeat Mike Lee in the senate race in Utah. Mittens is promoting McMuffin, the former CIA skank and supposed independent who like a true CIA skank changes his stripes depending on the situation.
The media are all shilling for McMuffin here. I think Mike will keep his seat, but the official polling says it is close. Mike is going door to door on Saturday and helping my state house MAGA candidate. Super decent thing to do. Mike has made his mistakes, especially when he was an anti-Trumper, but he is without question one of the better ones.
Trump just endorsed him, which is great. He’s a team player. Rinos? Not so much.
The kids see him as a conservative and hate him accordingly, Never-Trump history notwithstanding.
The protesters think he is toooooooo conservative, don’t you get it? They don’t like his CONSERVATIVE views! They want CRT, they want equity, they want LBGQRXYZ , they want MAPs (minor attracted person) , they are liberal loud mouthed SCUM.🤬
BRING THE ALUMNI IN, to weigh in as well.
The alum- like myself- would be happy to raise hell against this turd. 💩
You Go Girl!!!
Ron DeSantis is friends with this dweeb? Birds of a feather . .
This.
They go running together?
Getting Sasse out of the Senate is a favor….hopefully he sexually harasses a Freshman at a Frat party and gets kicked out of FU.
Sundance, gotta dig deeper…..and “Do you mean that there is absolutely no qualified candidates from Florida”?
Okay…the Big Club…now I have not read thru all the responses yet, just scanned them all….however….there are membership connections to dig deep on.
That Pete Ricketts guy….the Governor of Nebraska, good solid corn husker type?….has ties to Chicago…part owner of the family empire owning the illustrious Chicago Cubs.
A quick googledeegoo:
Forbes released its annual MLB franchise valuations on Friday, with the Cubs checking in at a net value of $3.36 billion. That’s a 5 percent increase from 2020, when Forbes valued the North Siders at $3.2 billion.
His, Ricketts, daddy founded TD Ameritrade.
The link says his stances (Sasse) are a subset of who he is…he believes in climate change…he is “learning” about the law pushed by RDS regarding gender etc….There should be no on the job training for such a highly desirable position!
Follow the political money connections and friends….
I love sending this tidbit to climate changers. Then ask them why there are nitrogen volcano’s on Triton.
Carbon is a primary component of all known life on Earth, representing approximately 45–50% of all dry biomass.[1] Carbon compounds occur naturally in great abundance on Earth. Complex biological molecules consist of carbon atoms bonded with other elements, especially oxygen and hydrogen and frequently also nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur (collectively known as CHNOPS).
Silly wabbit, all blue-hairs know carbon is a TOXIN!
The kooks will attack hydrogen next.
Oxygen ban is their final solution
He also said he would fight to retain tenure for UF faculty and that he would go to Tallahassee and explain tenure to those wanting to do away with it.
Who in in Tallahassee wants to eliminate tenure? DeSantis. So that’s 3 policies he pledged to undermine out of the starting gate.
I’ve found nothing to indicate that Sasse and DeSantis are friends, is there other information out there I’m unaware of?
Fellow Yalies. It’s a big club.
Ron DeSantis…yet again? Very disturbing.
When he is installed these childish tantrums will stop.
Sasse getting sassed. Whats not to like?
Sounds to me like everyone loses with that appointment.
Oh no! When I first started reading this article, despite the school being in Florida I did not even think about DeSantis until I got to the line “Everyone in Florida knows”. Hey, if Sasse doesn’t work out maybe they can bring Eric Cantor back from the politically dead.
Btw, it’s also sickening to read that Ricketts might want that Senate seat. Very greedy.
50 years ago (or so) Wendell Anderson, then Minnesota governor, had an open US Senate seat caused by the passing of Hubert Humphrey…he appointed himself. The voters became angry and after filling out the term he was never heard from again as a Republican won the seat in the next election.
Like the “Young Guns” (hurl), Cantor + McCarthy + Ryan, Sasse was touted as a fresh new conservative rising star. I guess leaving his Senate seat means he has recognized he’s goin’ nowhere with his political career so he might as well take an easy job with better pay.
While looking for info I came across this Op-Ed by Sasse in May of this year titled “How to Really Fix Higher Ed”. Foreshadowing! https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/student-loans-forgiveness-higher-ed/639438/ At least he opposes erasing student loans.
He probably wrote it to compel the university to choose him.
It gets worse:
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a law earlier this year making applications for college presidential openings confidential, effectively cloaking the process in secrecy until the very end stages.
Why would he do this??? And doesn’t it look a little too coincidental?
The UF search committee, headed by Rahul Patel, a member of the Board of Trustees, claimed its search was “exhaustive,” but it did not explain in any detail how such a process could have landed on Sasse, who possesses limited experience in higher education and accumulated a divisive, hard-right voting record in the U.S. Senate. Nor did the board bother explaining how secrecy best served the process.
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/nate-monroe/2022/10/07/nate-monroe-ron-desantis-defiles-uf-selection-ben-sasse-president/8205404001/
Why would he do this?
Cause the fix was in.
Sasse gets plum Florida academia job. Rickets gets to be senator when he leaves the governorship and an incumbent senator next time the seat is up for election.
DeSantis gets oodles of campaign $$$ from Ricketts family, and greater support from the club.
It is very sleazy all around. Like a three way quid pro quo.
Didn’t Illinois “ Blago “ go to prison for something similar ?
– Arraigning – a Senate Seat
Sasse is a complete loser, so understandable…
Did he not knife the TeaParty in the back when they worked so hard to get him elected?
Can’t stand Sasse but students don’t get to choose the University president, sorry. Can’t let the inmates run the asylum.
Sure, the students don’t get to choose, but see my comment above about the law DeSantis signed earlier this year. Why would they want the process of choosing a university president to be secret? What’s wrong with transparency?
Cause DeSantis was part of the set up. He made it so both Sasse and Ricketts get what they want.
They will now help him with his political ambitions.
Money won’t buy the presidency.
We already saw to that with Jeb Bush and we’ll do it again with RDS.
BTW — speaking of FL, has not JEB reappeared in the news?
Gator grad here. The University of Florida is the foundation of the Gator Nation, or so says our marketing campaign.
The UF President’s position is largely one of fundraising – adding to the huge endowment. If Sasse fits that bill it would explain the choice. Of course, to the snowflakes on today’s campus, Sasse is Trump and Hitler. To conservatives, he’s a RINO. To DeSantis, he’s . . . a money spigot???
Lot’s to unpack.
Lots
This is a bad sign. Brings back memories of Huey P Long dicking around at LSU. Poor judgment from DeSantis.
THIS.
In many ways, DeSantis can be seen as a modern day Huey Long. And not in a good way.
Hard to choose; cheer for the Rats or cheer for the Skunks.
MUCH Rather work with Skunks
You know they are There !
You judge a man by his deeds AND the friends he has.
I think were we to know all Ron’s deeds, we’d be mighty disappointed.
Sasse is despicable.
You talk hubris? Sasse has it in spades.
Here’s another problem: Sasse just screwed all of the people in Nebraska who voted for him. He’ll completely just shy of two years of his current six year term, and now instead of the voters deciding who his replacement will be, the Governor will decide.
Even worse. The next governor will appoint the outgoing governor so he is a two year incumbent and hard to beat in a primary next time the seat is up.
it’s a MAGA block ahead of time.
These students are protesting against Sasse because of his historical stance on gay marriage.
Ben Sasse is not a good look for Desantis. He knows he’s a Never Trump.
Could it be that DeSantis is also? He never even says Trumps name anymore.
We have a military industrial complex, but also a university industrial complex. Remember Donna Shalala? Clinton’s henchwoman/apparatchik? She became leader at U of Wisconsin and then U of Miami. She was run off for scummy business at one of them as I recall.
Obama had his buddies at another Florida U years later. That boutique-design campus bridge that collapsed years ago? Obama’s buddies were involved, and there was a coverup.
Florida may be an ongoing problem re these issues, given Sasse. Glad to see he’s being run out of the Senate though.
Janet Napolitano was appointed president of the entire University of California system, which is 10 big schools from 2013-2020.
And now she’s on the board of ZOOM. You know, the gubt spy network.
A couple of paragraphs below the one quoted it also says,
“DeSantis has no direct role in the process, but is responsible for appointing the panel that will now give final consideration to hiring Sasse. Sasse was selected as the only finalist after a national search and more than 700 candidates.”
So Sasse weaseled himself a cush university president’s job and was put in touch with a guy working for DeSantis that knew the guy/gal in the decision making seat(s). I am 61 years old and was too young when David Boren was governor of Oklahoma to even remember him. After serving as a U.S. Senator, he landed as president of the University of Oklahoma and remains in that position today I believe. Hard to believe he is still alive. Lived in the lap of luxury his entire life like so many public servants. It’s what they do. Not every never Trumper is evil. Most just simply resented his barging into the party without the proper invite and not holding appropriate compromising values intended to inflate the grandiosity of what they pretend they are doing. They do some good amid the waste, corruption, and self-aggrandizement which they view as necessary evils towards getting some little good accomplished.
https://www.ocpathink.org/post/lawsuit-seeks-release-of-ou-report-on-boren-allegations
Why in the world is DeSantis getting near a fuddy dud clown like Sasse, for anything!?!?!? Very, very disturbing. Major blunder for DeSantis. The students are onto something at the great U of FL.
What Ben Sass is doing for a living probably won’t matter much after Joe Biden gets his nuclear war going ……… just a thought ……… limited or otherwise.
Quick! Let’s get under the desk and wait for the blast!
Sasse has been involved in a lot of sleazy Washington stuff, including the house page sex scandal and the John Ashcroft torture memos.
This article is informative about a lot of it despite being from the left and being concerned about Sasse’s dominionist connections.
https://rense.com/general96/whatdidsasse.html
Yo Sasse….play with mangy dogs….you get fleas. You made your bed, now sleep in it you sorry RINO GOPrick.
DeSantis’ worst mistake to date. Compounded by the ongoing nature of the stink that is Ben Sasse which will only get more putrid and waft fron DeSantis with no relief. None.
Sasser is the worst of every world he infects: education, religion, right-wing politics, left-wing politics, national politics, Florida politics, and rational thought.
DeSantis dropped by half in my estimation of his savvy. This unforced error cannot be finesse or “walked back”.
Oops.
Is this the same place where Rubio teaches or used to teach?
Boy, that sure was a quick farewell and hello. Almost like Sassy packed his bags over night. Personally, not to wish ill will, but I hope the guy is miserable, worthless sack of poo.
Desantis is a fake
There is some compelling evidence to cause people to mistrust him.
Stomach turning.
RINOs are a sickening bunch.
U of F students and alumni should protest him. He is unfit all the way around.
Darn it, DeSantis. What a disappointment.
Here is the real question: WHY did Ben Sasse pick THIS MOMENT to resign? The answer is simple if you understand the Deep State, and how it plays its cards. It involves three things:
In short, Sasse’s and Rickett’s strategy will essentially shut out MAGA at both the gubernatorial and senatorial levels. Brilliant Deep State strategy prevails.
Sounds like McConnell to a tee. Time for a big MAGA finger in the eye on this!
Ricketts is term limited, and election for new governor is next month.
No need to resign. He’ll just leave senate seat open for his successor to then appoint him once the governorship changes hands in January.
I couldn’t care less if Ben Sasse becomes the president of the University of Florida. I just want him out of the US Senate. Am I reading the post correctly that the governor of NE can appoint himself to become the senator that replaces Sasse? That’s ridiculous.
A many West Virginia governor served hoping that he would win the “senator lottery!”
Revealed right there.
As for the student protestors, I’d much rather see them protesting our increasing involvement in a faraway war in a faraway country while our own border is being invaded by illegal aliens.
You know, the purple-haired trannies are the center of the world and Sasse is a direct threat to them.
I’d sure rather have Sasse running a college in Florida than running America from the Senate in Washington.
DeSantis – a wolf in sheep’s clothing? This tie to a Never-Trumper is difficult to reconcile.
Sasse is not liberal enough for the university crowd. Who would have thought that?
Well, he did wear an R label, not that he ever aligned with the conservatives. Maybe
that R label is enough to turn them against him.
Pol Pot wouldn’t be liberal enough for the university crowd.
Ricketts is not going to appoint a successor to Sasse. He will let the next governor do that (probably Jim Pillen, a political ally). No one in the general public knows whether Ricketts wants the appointment, although many speculate that he does. I am not enamored of either Sasse or Ricketts, although Ricketts did a pretty good job administering Nebraska’s already existing epidemic plan (which was relatively sensible).
Yes, Sasse was a Never Trumper. However, his voting record in the Senate got him re-elected. I think the thing that rattles the cage of a lot of Nebraskans (myself included) is his supercilious attitude (“I am more intellectual than thou.”), and if a sound challenger appeared, he might have lost in his next senate bid, if he were to run. Being a Never-Trumper didn’t help him any, but it wasn’t politically fatal, either. Nebraskans tend to be pragmatic, but, as Ben Nelson could have told you, they also have long memories.
Trump got 58% of the Nebraska vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections. That tells me Nebraska conservatives were happy with Trump. Sasse was already a known anti-Trumper prior to the 2020 election and yet during the GOP primary that year he easily beat his opponent (Matt Innis).
This tells me that Nebraska conservatives are asleep at the wheel, unfortunately. Same with Utah (Romney) and Kentucky (McConnell) and other states.
One way to look at it, if everything was just peachy for Sasse and he was super popular with the NE voters, then there would be no need to do all these shenanigans to ensure a GOPe/”never-Trumper” for the 2024 NE Senate race.
If they all (GOPe, Deep State, Uniparty, etc) know Trump is going to run and be as popular as ever (even increasing his vote total, again), then they also know Sasse would’ve been on the receiving end of Trump’s momentum in the NE primary. Someone other than Sasse as an incumbent with a “clean” voting (on bills) record will be harder to push out.
We need to just keep pushing and keep them playing their games. It’s obviously working. May not seem like it, but slow incremental change is how you get rid of the donkeys and elephants. Seat-by-seat, just like the libs took over seat-by-seat where the next thing you realize 30 to 50 years later is they have large majorities in certain areas. Reversing 30 to 50 years of slow advancement will take decades, but well worth it in the long run.
Question: What the hell does a US Sen from NEBRASKA know about higher education in FLORIDA?
Why not publish the list of Candidates and their Credentials and let Floridians judge for themselves..? (Which would be ‘Good Govt’ too, huh Ron?)
That’s what they should do. Who were the other candidates and what were their credentials? Sasse is well-educated but not in education, and his experience leading a tiny college in Nebraska seems quite insufficient for his new job.
This actually makes me happy. Sasse is out of the senate and goes UF where he can get a dose of reality. It’s possible Sasse can introduce some conservative thought to UF before he’s run off. Sasse is off to the political landfill.
He’ll probably end up running for a Senate seat in Florida in a couple of years.
I don’t like the mixture of government, politics, and Higher Ed for general reasons. Yes, a state school will have government involvement, but making political patronage plums out of university jobs is what leads to the deplorable situation of higher and higher price gouging, and Amerocans who paid the price so as not to be left behind, ensnared in perpetual debt.
Get the racketeering out of American education.
Maybe DeSantis believes this is a smart move, to wrest political control from the deviants who have it now. Political control is still political control, and we are always one possibly rigged election away from getting a corrupt politician running things that politicians should not be running.
As for DeSantis possibly believing he can handle some of these corrupt people, we all saw the same erroneous belief by our President Donald J. Trump. Dirty people are dirty people.
Sasse would destroy this university by wokeism and communism. His only appropriate job should be sweeping streets.
Ben Sasse has no principals except to do and say what will benefit him. Nobody likes a person with no morals or principals and sells themselves to the highest bidder. Democrats hate him because he has labeled himself a republican and republicans hate him because he is a total sell out. A no win for him, since universities are mostly braindead democrats and liberals, Sasse won’t get the position in the end but on the bright side, he is now out of Congress.
Ben Sasse was good buds with Denny Hastert, and helped run block for the intern page scandal about 15-20 years ago. Denny is also good buds with the Podesta bros and goes way back to their time as youths in Osaka. This can be found in the wikileaks from Mr. Passw0rd1 himself. Sasse is dirTy.
As an anon FBI guy claimed; “The Nose knows”…
Perhaps these “students” aka professional agitators should worry about their grades rather than who is running the show.
Correction needed in first paragraph, Sasse not Nebraska governor.
Thank you….corrected.
Suffice it to say, as an alum of UF I am not amused. At all. Despite being a junior Senator (and a not very good one), Ben Sasse has a CV that is not up par for this position. He is horribly underqualified. I’d have tossed his resume in the circular file, immediately, upon receipt. Frankly, I don’t care what the students think about his hire or even being considered. The University isn’t a democracy, nor a republic. It’s BIG BUSINESS. We need someone well versed in running big universities, not a little college as a tiny tick on an unimportant box. Box ticking is for Lefists. We don’t need some amateur a the helm of Florida’s premiere University. I don’t care who his friends are.
Great comment. The detractors should actually focus on your completely rational and legitimate argument. They don’t need to complain about his politics, he’s simply underqualified.
Exactly … unqualified … which makes this totally political … why would DeSantis stick his neck out for him … much more to this story.
You are so right!We grew up as Gator fans. My kids are all UF grads, along with several nephews, and my daughter and son-in-law are UF employees. The stink the protesters bring hurts the reputation of the University. I agree, he’s an amateur!
I agree that the University of Florida is not a democracy and is a big business, but I disagree that it’s not a republic.
UF is a public university that is part of the Florida state government. Since the State of Florida operates under a republican form of government, that means that all of the entities that fall under the umbrella of the State of Florida’s government are also part of that same republic.
This means that the people of Florida are more than entitled to make their viewpoints concerning UF publicly known to the officials that represent them within Florida’s government.
In another thread I had a thought that Sasse might be DeSantis’ backfill, to replace DeSantis as Governor if DeSantis decides to run for President. It would be too obvious if Sasse moved to Florida for no apparent reason. And I wasn’t thinking that DeSantis was in on the plan, just to be clear about that.
But then I found out that the requirements for running for Governor are pretty stiff, and I’m glad it’s like that. You have to be a resident of Florida for 7 years prior to the election. And I think I read that running for a federal Senate seat in Florida also requires 7 years of residency. That would prevent Hillary Clinton-style carpetbagging.