Sessions is one reason to flip control of the Senate

[DonViejo]

By Jennifer Rubin
Opinion writer
August 29 at 9:00 AM

The Wall Street Journal writes:

Some top Republican lawmakers are urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resist any pressure to quit following criticism from President Trump, and to stay in the job at least through the midterm elections.

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Why in the world would senators care if Sessions resigned before or after the midterm election? The only reason is to conceal from voters until the polls close on Nov. 6. the constitutional crisis that Trump and Senate Republicans are willing to drag us through if Sessions resigns (or is fired).

It would go like this: Sessions leaves. Trump either appoints someone who has already been Senate confirmed (thereby bypassing the Senate under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act) or finds someone from whom he can extract that pledge of loyalty he thinks is owed to him. The new AG will then fire Robert S. Mueller III or restrain his investigation or pull his clearance. The president will have cut short the only viable investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign’s role, if any, in that attack on our democracy. What then? Perhaps a Democratic House (if the GOP’s loses the majority) will impeach but these Republicans, the current and likely winners in the midterms, we have learned are unwilling to check the president and would not, even if he shot the proverbial man on Fifth Avenue, vote to remove him.

This is not merely theoretical. The Post reports, “President Trump, who levied extraordinary public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recent weeks, has privately revived the idea of firing him in conversations with his aides and personal lawyers this month, according to three people familiar with the discussions.”

Republicans sure don’t want voters to see that or Sessions’s resignation play out before the November vote. Democrats in that case might not only win the House but also the Senate. No, better to leave the constitutional train wreck for after the election when there is no obvious or immediate recourse, they figure.

Republican Sens. John Cornyn (Tex.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Ben Sasse (Neb.) and John Kennedy (La.) imparted this advice to Sessions, we are told. None is on the ballot — wouldn’t you know! — in November but plenty of their colleagues and would-be colleagues are. Republicans in essence are telling us not to trust them. We should ignore after 18 months of spinelessness, that Republicans are not prepared to stand between the president and constitutional chaos.

-snip-

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/08/29/sessions-is-one-reason-to-flip-control-of-the-senate

[duforsure]

1. And to block any Supreme Court picks from trump.