Sen. Jeff Sessions Changes the Trajectory of American Politics — and Perhaps American History

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AP

by VIRGIL28 Feb 20163231

To the catchy riff from Sweet Home Alabama, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) took the podium in Madison, Alabama, on Sunday afternoon and changed the trajectory of the 2016 Republican nomination fight—and perhaps also of U.S. history.

In becoming the first U.S. Senator to endorse Trump, Sessions, regarded as the gold-standard of immigration hawkery, declared, “Politicians have promised for 30 years to fix illegal immigration.  Have they done it?” As the crowd shouted, No!, Sessions answered: “Donald Trump will do it.”

Then Sessions added, “I’ve told Donald Trump this isn’t a campaign, this is a movement.”

Basking in Sessions’ warm words, Trump himself bounded to the podium and echoed Sessions as he marveled, “There has never been anything like this in American politics; they call it a phenomenon.”  Yes, a phenomenon—that’s what it is.

As is sometimes said of a new figure in politics, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Not surprisingly, Trump used the word “winning” many times in his remarks, but he also drilled down into specific detail.

Of course, he whaled on “illegal immigration.” We might add that it wasn’t that long ago that the word “illegal” was considered too politically incorrect for use in politics.  But man, has it made a comeback.

And there was more—much more.  He took dead aim at the globalization that has looted Middle America.

With populist fire, Trump rained hot hailstones on companies such as Carrier, Ford, and Nabisco, which, he said, have moved jobs overseas.

Decrying “all-talk-no-action politicians,” Trump promised that he would confront “every damn company that wants to leave our country,” imposing a steep tariff on imports.

Speaking of the entire political/donor class, Trump had plenty of brimstone left: “All these liars, all these bloodsuckers.” The crowd loved it.

Yes, the days when Republicans were knee-jerkingly subservient to the wishes of Corporate America seem over.  Other GOPers have echoed, for example, Trump’s fierce criticism of Apple over its insistence on protecting the cell-phone secrets of dead terrorists. And although Trump didn’t mention a Friday story in The Los Angeles Times, headlined, “While it defies U.S. government, Apple abides by China’s orders—and reaps big rewards,” one imagines that the brash mogul will have yet more to say about a company that obeys the People’s Republic of China while disobeying the United States of America.

Indeed, in Trump, for all his bold bravado, one can see a distinct and definable ideological core—even if the disdainful elite hate to admit it.  When he said, for example, that we need to “bomb the hell out of ISIS,” he was also careful to say that the Russians should help destroy the terrorists.

We might pause to note that this is the foreign policy philosophy school known as “realism.”  And it begins with, yes, a realistic view of the world.  A realist says, “If the Russians have muscle in the Middle East, why not work with them?  Why not make a deal?  Would we rather blunder around and risk World War Three?”

Adherents of other “isms,” of course, are horrified: Followers of  liberalism, for example, tell us that we should just hold hands and work against the real threat—“climate change.”  And proponents of neoconservatism would have the U.S. do all the fighting unilaterally, ordering the Russians to get out of the way.  But then the realists come back and say, “We’ve had enough of simpering John Kerry-style blather, but we’re also not eager for another vainglorious Bush 43-style Iraq War.”  It was folks like those, after all—those assembled to hear Sessions and Trump—who had borne the brunt of the recent fighting, not the conference-room Clausewitzes who populate DC.

Trump closed with his signature pledge about the American Dream: “We’re going to make it bigger and stronger than ever before … We are going to make America greater than ever before.”

As Trump exited the stage, Virgil noticed a man holding a sign reading, “The Silent Majority Stands With Trump.”

Is that true?  Will Trump assemble a majority and win?  We’ll have to wait and see, although so far, at least, the indicators are good.

In the meantime, this much is for sure: Trump is right; his campaign is a phenomenon, perhaps like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Yet for a possible comparison, Old Virgil thinks back more than a hundred years, to 1896, when William Jennings Bryan, then a 30-something ex-Congressman, electrified the Democratic national convention in Chicago with his stem-winding oration.  Indeed, in many ways, Bryan had a tough Trump-like message.

Invoking the memory of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, who held office from 1829-1837, Bryan directed his appeal to the common folk, saying:

It is for these that we speak. We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest.  We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity.  We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned.  We have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded.  We have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came.

As Trump might paraphrase Bryan, “We tried to be nice, and that didn’t work—so no more Mr. Nice Guy!”  Or as Bryan put it 120 years ago:

We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more.  We defy them! … What we need is an Andrew Jackson to stand as Jackson stood, against the encroachments of aggregated wealth.

We can note, to be sure, that the issues were different back then, when the federal government was tiny, and when, business, almost entirely unregulated, was “yuge.”  Today, of course, Big Government is at least as great a threat to American well-being as Big Business.  Yet both are, in fact, threats—and so both need to be checked.

In Chicago more than a century ago, Bryan closed with the ringing words that put him in the history books:

You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns.  You shall not crucify mankind upon a Cross of Gold.

The Democratic conventioneers, delirious with joy at Bryan’s unabashed willingness to take on the moneyed interests, nominated him in a frenzy of enthusiasm.

It turned out that Bryan lost the 1896 presidential election, although he swept the South, winning Alabama by nearly 40 points, and won most of the West.  In other words, if the ‘96 election were held today, given the population shift to the Sunbelt, it would be much closer than in that earlier era.

Still, even in defeat, the Great Commoner, as he was known, had a steel grip on much of the country.  The poet Vachel Lindsay was moved to write, “When Bryan Speaks,” including these stanzas:

When Bryan speaks, the wigwam shakes.
The corporation magnate quakes.
The pre-convention plot is smashed.
The valiant pleb full-armed awakes.

When Bryan speaks, the sky is ours,
The wheat, the forests, and the flowers.
And who is here to say us nay?
Fled are the ancient tyrant powers.

Reading these lines many decades later, one almost feels that Bryan did win—although, of course, he didn’t.

Indeed, those exulting in hopey-changey enthusiasm today might be sobered by the wisdom of University of Texas historian T.R. Fehrenbach, describing how Bryan’s populists allies in the Lone Star State, too, were defeated.  Recalling that the insurgents allowed themselves to become both dogmatic and overconfident, Fehrenbach observed:

The Populist assault on the state government was not intelligent but emotional.  They turned a political struggle into a crusade and made it ‘them’ against ‘us.’  They were too simplistic, forgetting the essential of American political success, the pragmatic alliance between disparate groups.

In other words, to win in a large polity such as Texas, to say nothing of the USA, a movement needs more than enthusiasm; it needs savvy.

Of course, it must be said that Trump, in our time, has plenty of savvy; he has confounded just about every “expert.”  And his new allies, Jeff Sessions, and, before him, Chris Christie, are plenty smart as well.  Indeed, students of the inside baseball of politics know that just last month, a “young turk” by the name of Stephen Miller went from being a top aide to Sessions to being a top aide for Trump.  As we know, sometimes the right sort of key adviser can be a key to victory.

So again, we’ll have to see if Trump’s neo-Bryanite crusade, bolstered as it is by top-line endorsers, can prevail.

Yet one thing is for sure: The people always have the power in their hands.  George Orwell, himself a pessimist, nevertheless noted their latent potential in his enduring novel, 1984. Describing the oppressed proletarians, he allowed that it was always possible that they could rise up, even against the dreaded Big Brother.  As he put it:

The proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning.

Maybe that’s the way things are today: Uncle Sam is no Big Brother, but he’s plenty big.  And so is business.

So yes, today’s “proles” have their work cut out for them. But for now, it seems, in the persons of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, they at least  have their champions.

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EXCLUSIVE– Donald J. Trump First Candidate to Reply to the ‘Sessions Test’

AP

by BREITBART NEWS8 Feb 2016Washington D.C.0

On February 5th, Breitbart News exclusively reported thatSen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) issued a list of five questions that all candidates must answer if they wish to seek the Republican nomination. In recent years, Sessions has emerged as the intellectual thought leader of the nation-state conservative movement. Sessions has articulated how mass immigration combined with reckless trade deals is compressing wages and decimating America’s middle class.

Sessions’ questionnaire consisted of five straightforward questions addressing immigration, trade, and crime in the United States.

The first candidate to reply to Sessions’ questionnaire was GOP frontrunner Donald J. Trump. In his response, Trump declares, “After my inauguration, for the first time in decades, Americans will wake up in a country where their immigration laws are enforced.”

Trump’s full, unedited answers to the Sessions’ test are below:

Question 1: How would you vote (or how did you vote) on fast-track, and would you support or oppose advancing a final trade agreement which enters the United States into a new international commission with binding authority on future United States trade policy?

ANSWER: I was steadfastly opposed to giving Obama his Fast-Track powers, and would have absolutely voted against it. This is one of the strongest distinctions between me and the other candidates in this race.  The Congress, apparently under the magical spell of donors, gave massive new powers to a President who has repeatedly abused his authority.  The other candidates in this race actually fought on Obama’s side to give him more power to abuse.

As for creating a new international commission with authority over United States trade policy I am, again, steadfastly opposed.  No foreign power should be given any control over the United States.  Yet the other candidates who supported Fast Track allowed President Obama to do just that.  It’s not too late to save our sovereignty: when I win the nomination, I will put America back in charge.

Question 2: If the vote on the Trans-Pacific Partnership were held today, and you had a vote to cast in Congress, would you vote for it or against it?

ANSWER: I have strongly and consistently opposed the TPP.  For decades, I have warned about how our terrible trade deals are killing the middle class.  We are getting taken to the cleaners.  My message on trade has been consistent from the beginning, and if politicians had listened to me years ago we would have saved millions of jobs, rebuilt our crumbling infrastructure, and saved trillions of dollars.

My candidacy is the only way to stop this terrible deal that will send our manufacturing – including our auto manufacturing – overseas.

TPP allows foreign countries to cheat by manipulating their currency, making it impossible for American companies to fairly compete.  Yet other candidates in this race have voted in favor of the currency manipulation that is killing our middle class.

What our incompetent leaders don’t understand is that the United States holds all the cards.  Other countries need access to our markets.  Yet we refuse to use that leverage, and we negotiate one terrible job-killing deal after another.  We buy from other countries, but they refuse to buy from us.

Under my Administration, we are bringing these jobs back to America.  No more one-sided deals.

Stopping the TPP is a matter of economic security and national security.  When I am the nominee, I will stop Obamatrade in its tracks and bring millions of new voters into our party — putting new states in play in the general election.

Question 3: Upon entering office, will you promptly and unconditionally terminate and rescind all of President Obama’s illegal executive amnesties – which provide work permits and entitlements to illegal aliens – including President Obama’s first executive amnesty in 2012, which remains in effect?

ANSWER: I will immediately cancel both of President Obama’s illegal executive amnesties, and all other unconstitutional executive orders.  After my inauguration, for the first time in decades, Americans will wake up in a country where their immigration laws are enforced.

Question 4: A supermajority of GOP voters say immigration is too high. Every year, on autopilot, we let in another one million immigrants on green cards, 700,000 foreign guest workers, half a million foreign students, and 100,000 refugees and asylees. Historical precedent would be to reduce record-breaking immigration, rather than continuing to surge it beyond all historical precedent. Will you support legislation to reduce immigration numbers, and will you oppose legislation that would add to the number?

ANSWER: I will support legislation to reduce the numbers, and will oppose legislation to increase the numbers.  I have laid out a detailed plan to accomplish this goal on my website www.DonaldJTrump.com.  My suggested reforms include a requirement to give all open jobs to Americans first — instead of importing foreign replacements.  This plan will appeal to voters from all walks of life by making it easier for workers in this country to find jobs and support their families.  It will also help minority workers, youth, and previous immigrants who face intense job competition from waves of incoming foreign workers.

I also proposed a temporary timeout on Muslim immigration until we can figure out what is going on and get our security situation under control.

Question 5: Today, law enforcement are under increasing scrutiny and face excessive criticism from the political elites and the media, and are being targeted by criminals and terrorists. Meanwhile, since 2011, the federal prison population has declined by over 20,000, and is on track to be at its lowest level since 2005. Since 2009, the total state prison population has dropped every year, and is over 56,000 lower than it was then. These circumstances may have contributed to a nationwide spike in crime. The FBI recently reported an overall increase in violent crime and a 17 percent increase in homicides in the nation’s 50 largest cities. At the same time, the CDC reports that heroin and opioid drug overdoses have reached an all-time record high. Do you support efforts by President Obama and some Republicans in Congress to reduce penalties for drug-trafficking and further reduce the federal prison population, or do you think government should do more to keep drug traffickers off the streets?

ANSWER: The way our cops are being treated is terrible, and our spineless politicians are not defending them.  Some politicians are mute, others are throwing fuel on the fire.

Policing saves lives, especially in our poorest communities.  Policing makes schools safe, increases property values, encourages investment and job growth.  We must stop attacks on police.  I have been the only candidate with a clear message on this issue.  As for drug traffickers, they are wreaking havoc on our communities and I oppose efforts to reduce penalties for drug traffickers: we must do more to keep traffickers out of our neighborhoods.

I have been pro-law enforcement all of my life.  The American people are crying out for safer communities, and I will bring this message of supporting law enforcement and safe communities to a general election.

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Big Government, 2016 Presidential Race, Jeff Sessions, TPP, Muslim immigration, fast-track, 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act

Senior Senate Staffer Reveals the Marco Rubio Story You’ve Never Heard

The Associated Press

by JULIA HAHN6 Feb 2016Washington D.C.4444

On today’s program of Breitbart News Daily, Donald Trump’s Senior Policy Adviser, Stephen Miller, shared his never-before publicly discussed insights intoSen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)’s duplicitous conduct during his push to get the Gang of Eight bill through the Senate.

At that time, Miller served as the communications director for the man who organized opposition to the bill, SenatorSen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). Miller recalled how throughout the Gang of Eight push, Sen. Rubio “directly deceived” immigration law enforcement and the American people.

Miller recounted one story in particular about Rubio’s treatment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) union president Chris Crane, who represents thousands of ICE officers. At the time, Crane slammed Rubio for having “directly misled law enforcement.” In his Congressional testimony, Crane said, “Never before have I seen such contempt for law enforcement officers as what I’ve seen from the Gang of Eight.”

For the first time ever, Stephen Miller explained exactly what Rubio did to Chris Crane and how he had deceived the nation’s ICE officers.

During the Gang of Eight press conference to introduce the bill, Crane had attempted to ask a question. Miller explains that Rubio watched as Chuck Schumer repeatedly refused to allow Crane to ask his question, and Rubio eventually oversaw Crane being removed from the press conference by Capitol Hill security. Miller said that Rubio:

… refused to meet with ICE officers throughout the process [of crafting the bill], even as he was meeting with open border special interests. At the very end, he [Rubio] had an optics-only meeting with [Chris Crane] the representative for ICE officers, in which he made a series of promises, every single one of which he broke and violated directly … When that same ICE officer and Marine went to a press conference to ask a question, Rubio — through his silence — was complicit in Schumer blocking [Crane] from asking a question and allowing him to suffer the indignity of being forced out of a press conference room — a man who had served his country in uniform, as a U.S. Marine — all to spare Rubio from the discomfort of being publicly questioned about why he had broken his promises.

Rubio saw them [Capitol Hill security] take Chris Crane and remove him from the room and said nothing. When he [Rubio] had a chance to show an iota of independence, one scrap of independence from Chuck Schumer, and side with an American Marine and ICE officer — Rubio chose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm with Chuck Schumer, as an American Marine was forced to suffer the indignity of being removed from Marco Rubio’s Gang of Eight press conference. That’s the story I want to tell today.

Miller’s retelling of the event is as follows:

I would love to tell a story for the first time to your incredible listening audience that I think gives some important insight into Mr. Rubio that I’ve never had a chance to tell before…

I want everyone to step into a time machine and go back to 2013 and remember what it was like. Remember the 24/7 media frenzy. Remember the promises: enforcement first, no welfare, no food stamps, we’re going to have the strongest, toughest border security ever, and, of course, no amnesty– all of these claims, by the way, which are still on Mr. Rubio’s website…

And of course all of those claims were bogus: it gave welfare, it gave food stamps, there was no border security, there was no ‘border security first’… But one of the things that we noticed early on in the process was that Mr. Rubio’s Gang of Eight was meeting with all of the open borders special interests in America: whether it be the Chamber of Commerce, whether it be certain tech corporations, whether it be anti-enforcement groups like La Raza, etc. etc. or the White House, which had an office in the Senate to help push through the Gang of Eight bill, a fact that Mr. Rubio never mentions in his many interviews on Fox and elsewhere promoting the bill. So we said, ‘Let’s get in touch with immigration law enforcement and see if maybe Mr. Rubio would be willing to meet with them.’

So we got in touch with one of the most incredible men that deals with immigration… his name is Chris Crane.

Miller explained that when Crane was finally able to secure a meeting with Mr. Rubio, “Crane had wanted to bring along [a staffer from Sen. Sessions office] who could provide some additional legislative support in the meeting… [however] Rubio’s office, of course, vetoed that completely… The meeting, as Chris Crane described it to me, was fairly horrifying.”

Crane said that he said to Rubio, ‘Well, you know, under your bill criminal aliens get legalized.’

And Rubio would say [in response], ‘Oh no, no, no, that’s the not the case at all.’

And then [Crane] said, ‘Well, under your bill, there isn’t any resources or support for ICE.’

[To which] Rubio said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll put that in there. We’ll give you, ICE, whatever you need. You’ll get it, you’ll get it, you’ll get it.’

And so Crane said that he obtained a commitment from Rubio to put stuff in the bill that Crane felt that ICE officers needed.

And instead what happened was– only a period of hours later– instead of doing anything that he had promised Chris Crane– a marine, ICE officer– that he would do. In the dead of night, Rubio and the Gang of Eight introduced a bill delivering everything they wanted for the special interests. Now a short time after that Marco Rubio, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Gang of Eight held a press conference. I decided to go and Chris Crane decided to go to watch the press conference and see what was happening. And so they did this magisterial roll out. All of the supporters of the Gang of Eight bill were up there and the Senators were up there and everyone was slapping each other on the back, and it was ‘Morning in America’ is here again.

Chris Crane, who had just been deceived directly by Mr. Rubio, decided that he wanted to ask a question at the press conference. As a citizen, as a marine, as an ICE officer, as a representative of 7,000 other ICE officers, agents and frontline personnel, he said, ‘I’d like to ask a question at the press conference.’ And I was standing next to him at the time. I believe Chuck Schumer was the one who was at the podium taking questions and Rubio was right next to him.

You know how it is at these scrums, someone shouts their question out, and then someone calls [on them]. And so Chris Crane tried and tried and tried, and everybody could hear him asking: ‘Will you take a question from law enforcement? Will you take a question from law enforcement?’

And Mr. Schumer was up there and Mr. Rubio was up there and they wouldn’t take the question. And everyone in the room… was aware that Chris Crane was trying to ask a question and Schumer wouldn’t call on him….

And I was looking at Mr. Rubio and he looked right at Chris Crane. He saw him there. He had just met with him a few days before, and he saw Schumer refusing to take his question. And instead of stepping up and saying, ‘Of course, we will take a question from a marine, from an ICE officer, and I will happily answer it’– Rubio stood there stone-faced and silent as Schumer refused, refused, refused to take Chris Crane’s question. And then Capitol Hill security came to remove Chris Crane from the venue for having the temerity to ask a question…

Rubio had the chance to step in and say, ‘You don’t need to remove an ICE officer, and marine, from our press conference. Of course, we’ll take his question.’

No, Rubio saw them take Chris Crane and remove him from the room and said nothing. Then later on when he was asked about it in subsequent media interviews he said, ‘Oh that’s unfortunate, they shouldn’t have done it.’ But when he had a chance to show an iota of independence– one scrap of independence from Chuck Schumer and side with an American marine and ICE officer– Rubio chose to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm with Chuck Schumer as an American marine was forced to suffer the indignity of being removed from Marco Rubio’s Gang of Eight press conference. That’s the story I want to tell today…”

Miller concluded:

You have to ask yourself when you’re thinking about who you choose as a Commander-in-chief, how you’d feel about somebody who’s willing to give the Chamber of Commerce everything they want, and willing to give La Raza everything they want … someone who’s willing to give Larry Ellison everything he wants, someone who’s willing to give Microsoft everything they want, and Mark Zuckerberg everything [he wants], but someone who is not even willing to have an honest meeting with ICE officers? You have to ask yourself what game was he playing? What was the goal? What could compel somebody to do that?

Because remember, he had all the leverage. He could have said to Chuck Schumer anytime he wanted to, ‘Mr. Schumer, unless Chris Crane gets what he wants, I’m walking away.’

Remember what Rubio always says when he’s asked about his involvement in the Gang of Eight. He says, ‘Well, I just wanted to get the best bill I could get out of the Senate.’ […] But as this story proves, that statement is materially false because at any point if he had said to Schumer, ‘I’m walking away… unless you give ICE what they want…’ If he had done that, Schumer would have had no choice, but to make those changes. So the fact that he didn’t do that is proof that every time Rubio says, ‘I tried to get the best bill out of the Senate,’ the unfinished part of that sentence is: ‘I tried to get donors and open borders interest groups the best bill for them that I could get out of the Senate.’ And Chris Crane would have been an impediment to delivering for these donors and interest groups.’

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