Why the Dems are Hysterical About Jeff Sessions, and Why They Don't Mean it
John Hinderaker, Powerline
The Democrats say that they will oppose confirmation of Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, and will smear him with discredited race allegations from 30 years ago. This is rather pathetic: if they can’t come up with anything within the last 30 years, they don’t have much of a case, to say the least. So why are they hysterical about Sessions?
Byron York supplies much of the answer:
Sessions is the Senate’s highest-profile, most determined, and most knowledgeable opponent of comprehensive immigration reform. Democrats are particularly anxious about immigration because of the unusually tenuous nature of President Obama’s policies on the issue. Those policies can be undone unilaterally, by the new president in some cases, and by the attorney general and head of homeland security in other cases. There’s no need for congressional action — and no way for House or Senate Democrats to slow or stop it.
That is correct. As Byron points out, all President Trump and Attorney General Sessions need to do is start enforcing the law–discharging Trump’s Constitutional duty, in other words.
The Democrats’ fanatical commitment to preserving illegal immigration is a big part of the reason why they are demoralized at the thought of Jeff Sessions as AG. I think we can add this, too: Under Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, the Department of Justice became the epicenter of Obama administration corruption. Legions of left-wing ideologues were brought in as DOJ lawyers. The Civil Rights Division became a partisan tool of the Democrats. Holder adopted racist policies, with enforcement of the law depending on the skin color of the victims. Cover-ups abounded, and corruption in other branches of the Obama administration was never prosecuted. Loretta Lynch had her famous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton.
There are a great many skeletons in Barack Obama’s closet, and many of the bodies are buried–to mix a metaphor–at the Department of Justice. For eight years, Obama and his Justice Department shamelessly stiff-armed Congressional investigations, FOIA requests and court orders. So it is no wonder that Democrats blanch at the thought of the Department of Justice in the hands of a conservative as able and as incorruptible as Jeff Sessions.
So the Democrats have pulled out their old reliable, the race card. Which causes me to wonder: has the race card ever actually worked? The Democrats obviously think that false accusations of racism are political dynamite, but if that were true, why don’t they win more elections?
In the case of Jeff Sessions, we know that the Democrats’ racism charges are insincere. They don’t believe what they are saying about Sessions, they are just trying to smear him in a desperate attempt to deny him confirmation, or else diminish his effectiveness as Attorney General. How do we know that? Because when Sessions ran for re-election to the Senate in 2014, the Democrats didn’t run a candidate against him. They let him win, unopposed. Surely if the Democrats actually believed that Sessions was a racist, they would have tried to prevent his re-election to the Senate. Right? At a minimum, they would have run a candidate against him and tried to explain to the people of Alabama that Sessions is a racist and therefore unfit to be a senator. But they didn’t do this, because they know their smears are baseless. And, of course, the people of Alabama, whom Sessions has served for so long, wouldn’t have been easy to fool.
I don’t think the American people will be fooled, either.
