Former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was the champion for American workers by ensuring that their voices on issues like immigration and trade were heard loudly and clearly in the halls of power.
But on Tuesday in the Alabama Republican runoff for the Senate seat that Sessions once held, the D.C. Swamp and all of the establishment-aligned entities that opposed Sessions are attempting to install the Swamp’s senator (Luther Strange) who will put the Swamp’s more corporatist interests first.
While former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was the heart and soul of the economic nationalist movement outside the halls of power after the 2008 election, Sessions emerged as the movement’s intellectual godfather in Congress. Had it not been for Sessions’ relentless and tireless defense of American workers on immigration and trade, Trump may have never won the GOP nomination and the presidency.
But on these two vital issues that former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon said were two sides of the same coin that have decimated American workers, Strange has not been on Sessions’ side.
Strange has dodged questions about whether he would support the DREAM Act to give amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.
And Strange lobbied for the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that sent thousands of jobs from Alabama to countries like Honduras, as Breitbart News has extensively reported.
The biggest tell, though, that Strange is diametrically opposed to the economic nationalist agenda that Sessions championed is that nearly every establishment-aligned group that viewed Sessions with nothing but scorn has gone all-in for Strange.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly begged Trump to campaign for Strange because they were so terrified that a Moore victory would inspire other grassroots challengers to, in Palin’s words, primary “their own Swamp creatures.” And an outside group aligned with McConnell that supports establishment candidates has reportedly spent at least $10 million for Strange.
Karl Rove’s top establishment ally Steven Law told the New York Times about the vital importance of this race for their interests, saying the establishment is hoping that a Strange win could enable Trump to shield other establishment Swamp creatures from primary challenges.
The Chamber of Commerce, which wants amnesty legislation and more trade deals that harm American workers, has also gone all-in for Strange.
Chamber of Commerce strategist Scott Reed told the Times that if Strange wins, “it would remind [former White House Chief Strategist Steve] Bannon who’s in charge, and I think give the president and the governing wing of the party momentum.”
“That’s why we’re going all in to shut it down now,” he said.
Sessions opposed the Chamber of Commerce’s coveted Gang of Eight’s comprehensive amnesty bill that would have devastated American workers for generations with all of his might. He issued a series of “critical alerts.” He informed House Republicans about the ways in which the amnesty bill would erode the rule of law and harm American workers and ultimately strategized with them to prevent the bill from passing Congress.
And when former President Barack Obama was working to implement his executive amnesty program, Sessions told the American people that he was hearing their voices on immigration and the importance of putting American workers first:
I also have a message for the American people: you have been right from the beginning. You have justly demanded that our borders be controlled, our laws enforced, and that, at long last, immigration policy serve the needs of our own people first. For this virtuous demand, you have been demeaned, even scorned by the governing class. They know so much, this cosmopolitan elite. They want you to believe your concerns are somehow illegitimate. That you are wrong for being worried about your jobs, or your schools, or your hospitals, or your communities, or your national security. These elite citizens of the world speak often of their concern for people living in poverty overseas, yet turn a blind eye to the poverty and suffering in their own country. They don’t want you to speak up. They don’t want you to be heard. They don’t want you to feel you have a voice.
But you do have a voice. And your message is being heard. And I am delivering that message to the Senate today.
Sessions also heard the voices of American workers on trade, and he led the charge against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal and, in doing so, made many Americans—and legislators—rethink the merits of unchecked free trade and globalization and how various deals impacted American workers at home.
Trump may not have won the presidency had it not been for the importance of the trade issue—and Hillary Clinton’s waffling on the TPP agreement that she had once called the “gold standard”—in the Rust Belt states. And it was because of Sessions that trade became such an important issue during the 2016 campaign.
When Sessions became the firs sitting Senator to endorse Trump, he also convinced many conservative who were on the fence about Trump to go to his side just like many black voters firmly went to former President Barack Obama when Obama won the Iowa caucuses in 2008.
The D.C. establishment and the interests that line their pockets know very well how powerful Sessions’ economic nationalist agenda is, and that is why they are pushing so hard to install someone like Strange who does not believe in it.
Palin said the D.C. establishment is “afraid” because grassroots conservative candidate Judge Roy Moore is “a threat to their power — because he is on our side, not theirs.”
“They know he’s not one of them. And they know they can’t control him,” she said. “We’re sending Trump someone we know will have our back, not Mitch McConnell’s.”
Palin told the audience that Judge Moore “answers to you — just as your good Senator Jeff Sessions answered only to you.”
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