But if somehow he had been elected, Sessions would indeed make a great President. Read on:
A Look Back at the Remarkable Presidency of Jeff Sessions
by HENRY WOODFIN
GRADY II
In the just-completed 2024 presidential election, the Republican Party has won the White House for a third consecutive time—only the third instance in a century that the GOP has managed this feat.
So it’s worth pausing over the origins and causes of this political achievement—this Republican “triple play.” In particular, we might ask: What additional political force has given the GOP this newfound political muscle? After all, from 1992 to 2012, the GOP had lost four of six presidential elections—and five of six in the popular vote. And yet the Republican presidential victories of 2016, 2020, and 2024 cannot be denied: Even the Main Stream Media are now willing to concede that GOP strength is more than just “a blip.”
In fact, if we examine these Republican win streaks, we can identify some commonalities. In each instance, we can see that one political figure stands as decisive in building the Republican Party’s national strength. Way back in the 1920s, the key force for the GOP was President Calvin Coolidge, who inherited the wreckage of Warren G. Harding’s presidency in 1923 and won big in his own right in the 1924 election. In office, Coolidge was so popular that he bequeathed a strong Republican majority to his successor in 1928.
In the next GOP win streak, in the 1980s, the Republican main man was President Ronald Reagan. In the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections, the Gipper was the big winner, and his popularity helped George H.W. Bush win another thumping victory in 1988.
And most recently, in the Teens and Twenties, the undeniable architect of sustained Republican success was the 45th President, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III of Alabama. His victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was relatively close, and yet his re-election in 2020 was a landslide. And as we have just seen, President Sessions’ continued popularity made it easy for his anointed successor to hold the White House in 2024.
So yes, over the last eight years, President Sessions has indeed consolidated a new Republican majority. In particular, we can identify three pillars of strength:
First, by virtue of his long service to the Republican Party, he held the Republican base.
Second, by virtue of his strong stance on key issues of principle, he solidified the support of Tea Partiers and Constitutionalists. Crucially, he recaptured the allegiance of the United States Independence Party, the group of disaffected Republicans that had split from the GOP over the immigration issue.
Third, by virtue of his populist appeal, Sessions brought over a great many centrist Democrats, who were dissatisfied with former President Barack Obama but nevertheless fearful of most Republicans. Wits of the time said that Sessions was a “gateway drug” for wandering Democrats.
During the Obama years, Sessions, then in the US Senate, stood out. He was a solid conservative vote on virtually all issues, from taxes to guns to Life, yet nevertheless he took bold positions on immigration and globalization that jolted the open-borders libertarian hegemony that then prevailed within the GOP. As he said repeatedly, a truck driver is just as important as a billionaire. That is, protecting the jobs of ordinary Americans were just as much a priority as protecting the profits for venture capitalists. Indeed, Sessions showed his Southern spunk: He wasn’t afraid to mix it up with liberal Democratic billionaires. Ideological purists were horrified; ordinary Americans were delighted: Finally, someone in Washington was willing to fight for them.
Sessions thus pointed the way to a new and powerful kind of politics with broad national appeal: It was sometimes called “populism,” although others preferred to call it “Middle Class Conservatism.” For his part, Sessions eschewed labels; to him it was just common sense.
Yet by whatever name, Sessions’ brand of politics proved wildly popular in his home state of Alabama; in 2014, he was the only US Senator, in either party, who was unopposed for re-election. Moreover, Sessions’ message resonated to a larger audience than just the Yellowhammer State. His staunch opposition to Obama’s amnesties of 2014, 2015, and 2016 made him a national hero. Indeed, he was admired by many Democrats who could see that the rising tide of illegals flooding into the country was jeopardizing not only their wages at work but also their safety at home.
Thus Sessions emerged as an important national figure. And yet as we remember, during the Obama years, he was not only not generally seen as a future president, but he himself actively swatted down rumors that he might throw his hat in the ring.
Still, the presidential speculation about Sessions continued. In those years, GOP strategists were hungry for victory; after all, the Party had lost the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections by wide margins. Notably, Republican politicos knew all too well that their candidates in ’08 and ’12 had virtually no appeal to swing voters. And so many Republican thinkers came to believe that that a more populist message could bring disaffected Democrats—of the type who had once voted for Ronald Reagan—back into the Republican fold.
Read the rest here:http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/08/a-look-back-at-the-remarkable-presidency-of-jeff-sessions-2/
