Tommy Tuberville defeated Jeff Sessions in this past Tuesday's Alabama primary for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Democrat Doug Jones. It marked the final nail in the political coffin of Sessions, a long-time popular conservative senator for that state before he avidly supported Donald Trump in their 2016 presidential primary and was later rewarded with the post of Attorney General in the new administration. Because Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation, Trump never forgave him and often publicly berated this crucial campaign supporter before he was finally pushed out of office. Seeking his old Senate seat, which Jones had won in a 2017 special election upset in this strongly red state, Sessions was thwarted by Trump's hearty endorsement of former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, who has consistently led in the polls over both Sessions and Jones. So in all likelihood, next January we'll see that seat return to the Republican side...but if you're a conservative you shouldn't be rejoicing...
Jeff Sessions to me was the great, articulate spokesman in the United States Senate for the conservative positions on the various issues coming before it. Ever since C-Span2 began live floor coverage of this body nearly twenty years ago, I enjoyed watching him get on the floor with his polite, soft-spoken demeaner and then proceed to thoroughly thrash in the most civilized way the other side's arguments, and he was a powerful voice on the Judiciary Committee...conservatives should mourn that he won't get a chance to return. Instead we have a good ol' boy political neophyte who is totally in the pocket of the current president and won't express a single independent thought that doesn't have the White House's seal of approval stamped on it preapproved. The only problem with this is that as things now stand, Trump's probably going down in November and we'll have a Democrat as president two weeks after Tuberville gets sworn in. And poor old Tommy will be standing there all alone without anybody besides the typical radio and TV hacks to tell him what to say...that's what I mean when I said conservatives shouldn't be rejoicing: Jeff Sessions would surely know what to say and how to say it. I was sadly shocked in '16 to seem him so whole-heartedly supporting and campaigning for Trump in Alabama when that primary campaign was still up in the air and Ted Cruz, a true, consistently conservative standard-bearer, had performed so well on the trail. Cruz was Sessions' natural choice but he instead made a political mistake that later came to haunt him, and he's paying for it now...maybe FoxNews will hire him on as a political analyst, though. I often disagreed with Jeff Sessions' opinions as a senator and some of his actions as Attorney General, but felt that he was treated very disrespectfully during the Senate hearing for his confirmation as well as by Trump when the President decided he was no longer useful to him and openly turned against him, a pattern that this individual has repeated with many, many others...
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