Jeff Sessions Now Belongs to the Ages
...specifically, the Middle Ages.
Last night's GOP primary election for Jeff Sessions' old seat currently being filled by Blue Dog Doug Jones could be seen in several ways depending on from which angle you look at it. It could be seen not so much as a defeat for Sessions but a win for Trump. As one GOP strategist put it last night, Alabamans are furiously behind Trump and if he'd told them to write in Mickey Mouse's name, 50% would have.
Trump has been infamously angry at his penultimate Attorney General ever since Sessions did the one and only borderline ethical thing in his then 20 year-long federal political career and recused himself from any DOJ probe into the Russia investigation. If Trump had known he was going to do that, plainly he wouldn't have even nominated Sessions for the post. Sessions wasted precious little time in his recusal- Hardly had his little hand been removed from the Bible he'd publicly adopted his decision of laissez faire regarding what was then former FBI Director James Comey's probe.
But not so fast. If Alabamans were so furiously behind Trump, then why is even a bland, nondescript Blue Dog like Doug Jones sitting in Sessions' old seat? In a deeply crimson state like Alabama? In that runoff race, Trump told Alabama to vote for Luther Strange in the primary. And when he lost to twice disgraced state Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, Trump held his nose and told Alabama to vote for Moore. Alabama elected Jones.
However, Jeff Sessions was not your run-of-the-mill Senate candidate. He was thrust into the absurd position of having to run for his old seat after Trump had nominated him for the AG spot only to get fired from it by that same man less than two years later, paving the way for Matt "The Kingpin" Whittaker then personal injury shyster and former HW stooge Bill Barr.
And perhaps it wasn't so much that Trump bad-mouthed Sessions so hideously that the voters were forced to vote for a former football coach with the risible name of Tommy Tuberville. It could be seen as Sessions, at one point, until the day before the primary, being penalized for being the ultimate Trump lapdog. Don't forget, Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump long before he won the nomination in Cleveland July of 2016 (mid-February, to be more precise). In fact, by then Sessions was so deeply embedded in the campaign, he was seen kibbitzing with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the US, at the Mayflower Hotel.
In fact, it was such a memorable, in-depth conversation about affairs of state that at his own confirmation hearing, Sessions couldn't remember even meeting Kislyak.
I see Sessions' humiliating end to his public career as a clear-cut case of the racist chickenhawks coming home to roost.
Sessions had a good, long 20 year run in the Senate fighting every bill and amendment brought forth by Democrats intending to give justice, social parity or reparations for any historically oppressed minority. In fact, during his 2005 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lt. Commander Swift was told by Sessions that we should just execute every prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, even though very few were held there with charges.
Then Trump descended on the escalator like an orange Venus painted by Botticelli on purple microdot and Jeffy Sessions knew he'd found the Republican for which he'd been searching his whole life- Someone who launched his campaign that, in a sane world, would have folded in three weeks like his last publicity stunt of a campaign in 2012. In fact, it's a miracle Sessions waited even eight months to throw his full-throated support behind a guy who launched a presidential campaign by calling Mexicans "rapists" and "criminals" and bragging about how "really, really rich" he was.
But Sessions paid the ultimate political price for his unswerving loyalty to Trump that even pitifully continued until the day before the primary and even last night when he conceded. This was after an endless stream of childish insults that Trump had lobbed at him on Twitter and elsewhere. And perhaps the only reason Tuberville won was because more moderate GOP voters in Alabama last night looked at Sessions and saw just a Trump Mini Me, long since fallen out of favor with the Dr. Evil in the Oval Office.
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