A Republican Senator’s Tweet About What The Founding Fathers Would Have Wanted Is Getting A Lot Of Snappy Responses

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,” 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.

https://twitter.com/LeslieMac/status/1424523919768408064

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.

In fact, there’s lots and lots of things the Founders never intended.

https://twitter.com/Maxfacts4/status/1424531197393346561

https://twitter.com/JoshuaMZeitz/status/1424549554909818881

But some, instead of dwelling on what they would and wouldn’t have intended, argued that doing so is a waste of time anyway.