The Senator took an Oath to Preserve, Protect and Defend.....

Dave Ball, the chairman of the Washington County Republican Party and a Peters Township councilman, was probably one of the most widely seen and quoted men in America Tuesday.

Ball’s notoriety followed comments he made Monday to KDKA-TV political analyst Jon Delano, denouncing the vote by U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial. In a discussion on resolutions censuring Toomey that Washington County Republicans and other GOP county organizations in Southwestern Pennsylvania have put forward, Ball said of Toomey, “We did not send him there to vote his conscience, we did not send him there to do the right thing, whatever he said he was doing. We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that he did not represent us.”

Ball’s comments went viral, and were a staple of Twitter, were included in stories in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, The Hill and other publications, were shown on CNN, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and ABC-TV’s “The View,” and was the quote of the day on the Political Wire website.

The reaction on social media and by some commentators was overwhelmingly negative. Commenters on Twitter said his remarks were “anti-American,” “madness” and “an embarrassment.”

When reached Tuesday, Ball said that he “should have been clearer in the message I was trying to convey.”

“I used those terms in the sense of not departing from the Constitution and applying his personal dislike for the president,” Ball explained. “His personal dislike for the president is longstanding.”

And, no, Ball does not believe Toomey’s vote to convict Trump was “the right thing.”