Conservatives love the Founding Fathers. Or at least they like invoking them to score political points. Every now and then some GOP lawmaker goes on Twitter and makes some bold declaration about how George Washington et al. would hate something Democrats are doing. They then get dragged online. It’s happened to Jim Jordan. And on Sunday it happened to the far more obscure lawmaker Mike Braun.
Who’s Mike Braun? He’s a senator from Indiana. He doesn’t like the Affordable Care Act, abortion or same-sex marriage. He also doesn’t like the fact that Joe Biden was elected president. He was one of the GOP lawmakers who helped spread Trump’s voter fraud lies. Still, he rarely makes news. But on Sunday he became known as yet another Republican mocked for making questionable statements about the people who helped found the United States.
The Founders never intended the federal government to grow to this size.
— Senator Mike Braun (@SenatorBraun) August 8, 2021
“The Founders never intended the federal government to grow to this size,” Braun tweeted. It’s not clear what exactly he was referring to. It likely has to do with the $1 trillion infrastructure bill the Senate is moving slowly to passing.
But to most, it just seemed like an ahistorical nonsense. And many people were happy to pile on top of it, pointing out other things that Founding Fathers wouldn’t have intended. Like certain people being free or equal to white men.
The founders also never intended for Black people to be US citizens. https://t.co/7e8Xf7m9tX
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) August 9, 2021
https://twitter.com/LeslieMac/status/1424523919768408064
The "founders" never intended for black people to vote.
What's your point? pic.twitter.com/NuuhA20yXV— DaNoochie (@merriman_md) August 8, 2021
The Founders also never intended for women and people of color to have the right to vote either, so I think it’s probably ok if we think outside of their limited perspective. https://t.co/nQdT11vgBK
— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) August 8, 2021
The Founders considered me property soooooo
Your point, sir? I’m still property? I’d like a follow up https://t.co/RiBN9rpssH
— Jessica Mason Pieklo (@Hegemommy) August 9, 2021
They also were very clear about impeaching law-breaking presidents, especially ones who inspired a violent and deadly coup — which the Trump-loving Braun was, of course, against.
The Founders expected that Congress would impeach and remove from office a president who abused the powers of his office, but you didn’t seem to give a damn about that, did you? https://t.co/umll6S20Dn
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 9, 2021
The Founders never intended for a president to overturn an election and install himself permanently. In fact it was one of their biggest concerns. https://t.co/UXB9UT0mTP
— Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) August 9, 2021
The founders never intended an acting president to incite an insurrection to overthrow the results of a fair election.
— 𝓙𝓲𝓶𝓶𝔂 𝓙 🫒🇵🇸 (@JimmyJ4thewin) August 9, 2021
In fact, there’s lots and lots of things the Founders never intended.
https://twitter.com/Maxfacts4/status/1424531197393346561
The Founders also didn’t intend for senators to be elected directly by the people, or for that electorate to include women, but again, things change, right?
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) August 9, 2021
So what? The Founders never imagined electricity, the internal combustion engine or computers either. pic.twitter.com/2rgVKflVeB
— Carl Feher (@CJ_Feher) August 8, 2021
https://twitter.com/JoshuaMZeitz/status/1424549554909818881
The Founders never intended to have car parts tycoons buy Senate seats, either. https://t.co/O3KK5R7VS0
— Tom Winter (@WinterForMT) August 8, 2021
But some, instead of dwelling on what they would and wouldn’t have intended, argued that doing so is a waste of time anyway.
Anyone who makes serious appeal to "constitutional originalism" or "what the Founders wanted" is in stage 4 of Terminal Dog Brain. The Founders imagined themselves as Deist Medicis overseeing a claque of subsistence farmers who bought each other's sisters with liquor and millet
— ★ (@corpseinorbit) August 9, 2021