Indiana Republicans Face Backlash Over Taxes, Redistricting, and Failed Promises Despite One-Party Control

Great thing about the show, we dislike both sides equally, right? Like we told you, we’re cheering against everyone because the establishment, the incumbents, they’ve done a horrible job, noted the other side. They haven’t stood for anything. Which if you’re not running on anything specific, like just say, I’m going to lower your property taxes, that doesn’t mean anything. We heard that for a year and a half from the guy who’s the governor, by the way, don’t you guys love Braun’s now suddenly back to being a hero. This guy crapped on the entire state and has over and over and over and over and over again. Property taxes, utility bills, IEDC, tolling, one tax increase after another. But because he pumped some money into Senate races and they win, nothing’s changed. He’s now suddenly back to being a hero. Braun didn’t deliver on anything he promised. And we’re going to get into how wrapped up in the theater of politics people get. One of the great things about being here, not that I didn’t do this before, but I can do it on a level like never, because you can’t get fired twice unless I fire myself. I can tell you exactly what’s going on without any need, or want to be in a club, or be with any group or anything else. Mike Braun didn’t deliver on any of the promises he made last year. The key promises, the government got bigger, the taxes went up. He didn’t fix property taxes. Utility bills are record high. The IEDC is the same corrupt, unethical organization that it’s always been, doing the same BS it’s always done. And yet today you would think that he is right up there with General Grant, Patton, pick your favorite military leader, as one of the greatest heroes in American history.

Critics Say Indiana Republicans Failed to Deliver on Major Campaign Promises

It’s like, well, what about the results? This is the crazy thing to me about this, this desperate attempt to get rid of Rod Bray, and I talked about this last night on social media a little bit. Braun and Bray agreed on like 98% of the stuff. Bray and Braun were working together. Bray and Braun agreed on property taxes. Bray and Braun agreed on utility bills. Bray and Braun agreed on the governor tolling. Bray and Braun agreed on the Bears, all the IEDC, all of this stuff, Bray and Braun are sympatico. It’s disingenuous BS from Braun and Beckwith and Banks and the rest of these guys because they didn’t say anything about Bray. They didn’t say anything about Bray until he voted against redistricting. And then all of a sudden, he’s so bad, he’s got to go. Well, what about all of this? Braun, Bray, Huston, Holcomb, the Mount Rushmore of terrible that has screwed over this state, and yet not a word on this from these people until redistricting. Braun doesn’t believe Bray is a bad guy. If Braun believed Bray was a bad guy screwing over Hoosiers, he would have fought him on property taxes. You know, the thing that actually matters, the thing that actually affects your life, the thing that actually causes you to potentially lose your home. Braun signed off on the deal that Bray and Huston and Geoff Thompson put together. This isn’t, Braun didn’t do this because he cares about you. None of these people did this because they care about you. They did this because they’re subservient to Trump.

Redistricting Fight Raises Questions About Political Priorities and Power

Where was Jim Banks when we put a thousand people in the Statehouse for property tax rally? Where was he? Where was Jim Banks when Braun signed off on the deal that will guarantee your utility bills are going up because it allows the utility company to recoup 80% of their little Doctor Frankenstein experiments on SMRs, the nuclear stuff that’s not proven to work? Where was Banks on Braun’s $6.5 billion tolling proposal? Where’s Banks on Braun’s billions of dollars giveaway to the Bears if they come nowhere? These people, they don’t care about you. They cared about making Trump happy, which is what this was all about. The redistrict, look at who is, look at our reps. Like I’ve said, take all of the reps, the seven congressmen and women in the state of Indiana and morph them into a human like you guys remember the Captain Planet cartoon where they put their rings together and then they would make Captain Planet emerge. Put a composite of our seven reps together, and boy, people get really mad when I frame it in these terms because they don’t want to answer the question. Jefferson Shreve, Rudy Yakym, professional office hopper, Erin Houchin, Messmer, nutbag Victoria Spartz, Baird, Stutzman, the current version of Stutzman, not the current ass kisser, weak kneed version of Stutzman, not the kick ass one we had before he got smoked by Todd Young in a Senate primary ten years ago. Put these people together and make them a human. Do you think that person or those two people are going to save the Republic? Like that’s what they make this out like, this redistricting is about saving the Republic. It’s laughable. It’s unbelievably laughable. But they want you to believe that somehow 1 or 2 more Hoosiers were going to save the Republic.

Election Strategy and Weak Voter Enthusiasm Complicate GOP Expectations

By the way, given what we saw yesterday in the turnout and enthusiasm from the Democrats, and we got to still parse through who got nominated and where, if they had redistricted, if you had gutted up Marion County and stretched Marion County into all of these other districts and changed the First Congressional District, it’s still likely they would lose the first. The math on the redistricting in the first never got them to a guarantee of winning the First Congressional District in northwest Indiana. There’s not a single person, even the most ardent of supporters, who was going to say slam dunk. It was still a toss up district. They thought they could cut 3 or 4 percentage points. It’s a Democrat plus 5 or 6 if you look at the traditional trend of the First Congressional District. They thought with redistricting they could shave 3 or 4 more, maybe five, make it five more Republican. Okay. In an even year now, it really is a toss up. It ain’t going to be an even year. Guys, you look at every poll that’s out there, you look at the enthusiasm, look at the special elections that have taken place, you look at yesterday in Indiana, the enthusiasm from Democrats compared to Republicans, there’s no guarantee they were going to win the first. They were probably still going to lose the first. Now you’ve carved up and taken safe Republican districts. Keep in mind, and this is what pisses me off about how disingenuous these people are, I know some of you are saying like, can he really do three hours on the election? I haven’t even got to a single election yet. What time is it, Jason? It’s 919. Okay. I’ve been at it 20 minutes and I haven’t gotten to a single election. They’re gonna have to cut me off. I’m not going to get to all the elections. Not to interrupt chat. Yes. We will not interrupt the chat. We will do the chat. There was no guarantee you were gonna get the first, even with the redistricting. Certainly not with Democrat enthusiasm. And then you start carving up the safe Republican districts, which, remember, for all these people complaining about Andre Carson, the reason Carson’s district is so safe is the Republicans made it that way because Victoria Spartz is a psychotic nutbag. They had to change the district to save her. They had to make Marion County the Carson district more Democrat to make Spartz more Republican because she was going down. They never want to acknowledge that they’ve already gerrymandered the district the last time. Then you start pushing, by the way, the Spartz race, this is amazing. Spartz didn’t get 60% of the vote, and she ran against a no name with no money in a primary. I’m not saying Spartz is going to lose, but that’s horrible. Nobody knew who her opponent was. Those were almost all protest votes against Victoria Spartz. She couldn’t get to 60% in a primary. That’s going to probably be a competitive district again this fall. There’s a real chance. Doesn’t mean she’s going to lose. But then you start, you push all of these Democrat voters into these districts that are already trending more Democrat. Somebody posted this yesterday and they said, look, there’s a chance if they redistricted, it could have been five four. I don’t think that was going to happen. I think some of these districts are still safe enough that these Republicans would pull through. But my God, what does that say about our state? What does it say about governance in Washington that the only way we can win elections is to change the maps? And what are you winning? This is the question I keep asking. What are you winning? What have you gotten in the past year and a half?

Rising Costs, Taxes, and Government Spending Fuel Voter Frustration Across Indiana

Let’s talk about what you’ve gotten in Indiana, and let’s talk about what you’ve gotten in Washington. We are at or surpassing record gas prices. Republicans control everything, guys, and they have for a year and a half. We are at or surpassing record gas prices. Inflation still totally out of control. Prices are not coming down. What are we doing in Iran? What the hell is going on? Look, guys, the Iran stuff is more chaotic than Ukraine because at least Ukraine, it wasn’t our guys and girls. Do you have any idea what’s going on with Iran right now? If you answer anything other than no, I don’t, you’re lying because nobody does, even probably the people doing it. Why were there? How it ends? What the goal is? Why we did it to begin with. None of that has been laid out. You have gas out of control. You have us involved, our soldiers, our pilots, our planes, our everything involved in a dangerous international conflict. You have inflation that’s totally out of control, prices that are totally out of control. The national debt has skyrocketed to $39 trillion. The signature bill of the Republicans is this big, beautiful bill that added trillions of dollars and does, my account and others have told me, ain’t nothing being done for the average person in that bill. We laid that out in great detail. Ain’t nothing being done for the average person unless you work in a very specific couple industries. And many of you have posted about how your tax bill didn’t go down, your tax bill didn’t change. So what was all of this about? Give us more of that. The Republicans know they can’t win on governing, so they said, well screw it, we’ll change the maps in Indiana. What have we gotten? We know our property taxes are going to continue to go up. The assessments have hit. They lied to us about that. Record utility bills, record gas taxes. Now they run as temporary, suspended a sales tax on gas which is going away next month. He’s already said that. So you’ll be back to the record taxes on gas. The Republicans here raise taxes by $1 billion. They raise taxes by $1 billion last year to fund their budget. Brand new tax increases across the state with tolling. You’ve got blatant corruption and unethical behavior with the IEDC. Billions of dollars flowing out with that. You’ve got this Mid-States Corridor, which is the pet project of the governor, which billions of dollars are supposed to go to. We don’t have any money for our roads without raising taxes by billions of dollars, but we have billions of dollars laying around for a pet project that benefits the governor’s business. And you’ve got the governor’s close political ally, Tom Kleinhelter, the sheriff of his home county, somehow evading an 80 page probable cause affidavit that had him dead to rights on pilfering money out of the commissary, and it magically goes away when Braun gets elected governor. And then the Republicans mind.