Rep. Mo Brooks was the true Trumpian candidate in Alabama, which is why I endorsed him in the primary (here, here and here). When the accusations against Roy Moore first arose, I proposed that the president make a deal to replace Moore with Brooks.
Obviously, the GOP would be in a much better position right now if only Republicans had learned to hang on my every word. Instead, everyone did exactly the wrong thing, and they got the worst of all possible worlds.
Trump should have endorsed Brooks in the primary, but he endorsed Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pro-amnesty candidate, Luther Strange, on the advice of his son-in-law. Because who knows Alabama politics better than Jared Kushner? (I guess we can scratch the expression, “As goes Kushner, so goes Alabama!”)
Now Trump has lost twice in a state that voted for him by a nearly 3-to-1 margin over Hillary just last year. Apparently, Trump’s voters won’t blindly follow him, whatever he does. I wonder if this is relevant information for the midterms …
McConnell spent millions upon millions of dollars in nasty ads to defeat Mo Brooks in the primary, because Brooks takes sensible positions on immigration.
Can’t have that! McConnell pulled out all the stops to block Brooks, so he could keep big donors rolling in cheap foreign workers. Soon they’ll have all the labor they need — and a federal government run by Hugo Chavez. The Chamber of Commerce is “diversifying” Republicans out of their jobs.
Thanks to McConnell’s brilliant strategy of opposing Brooks, now he’s stuck with another Democrat — and a razor-thin Senate majority. McConnell fully deserves to lose his majority, but the rest of us don’t deserve the horror of a Democratic Senate. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out a way to do one and avoid the other.
The most status-conscious Republicans were hysterical about Roy Moore’s holy roller Christianity. I hope their tax cut bill dies. Should’ve backed Mo Brooks!
The good news is, even with the media carrying on 24-7 about Moore being a “CHILD MOLESTER!” and “PEDOPHILE,” the election was still a nail-biter. I salute the good people of Alabama and admire their contempt for the media.
But, otherwise, Moore’s loss is good news for patriotic Americans. First of all, the media would have set up tents outside Moore’s Senate office around the clock, capturing his every utterance, so they could broadcast anything stupid he said and demand that all Republicans defend it or disavow it.
Most important, now Mo Brooks can run in 2020 and return the seat to a respectable Alabamian who is rock-solid on the most important issue.
Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration. It’s all that matters to the country, and it’s all that matters for winning elections.
“Anti-establishment” is not a winning issue. Without immigration as the GOP’s lodestar, every election will be a rerun of the Tea Party from 2010 to 2012, when Republicans lost Senate seat after Senate seat, entirely in unforced errors.
We’ll have to watch helplessly as “establishment Republicans” fight “anti-establishment Republicans” over the right to milk a he-goat. Both sides will lose, and Democrats will sweep Congress and destroy our country.
Immigration was never a top issue for Moore, though, when pressed, he gave the right answers. That’s not a good way to prioritize.
Republicans who treat immigration as a backburner issue should be required to run on the issues they consider more important — in California. See how your arguments fare in a state that’s already been transformed by immigration. That’s your new country.
How stupid do you have to be to carry on about taxes, defense spending, ISIS, abortion or the Ten Commandments while intentionally losing on the one issue that will determine the outcome of all these other issues? Too stupid to be of any real help.
That’s why McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan keep producing loss after loss for Trump. They’ve turned the Trump presidency into the Bush presidency — but, this time, with Jared Kushner! (Obviously, any Republican president would desperately seek Kushner’s counsel — but could Jeb! have gotten Ivanka, too?)
GOP candidates are not going to win on hating the Republican establishment any more than Republicans are going to win on Donald Trump’s personality. The Alabama election proved both sides of that equation.
For years, Sen. Jeff Sessions, whose seat was being replaced in Alabama, was the one stalwart on immigration in the Senate — and a thorn in Mitch McConnell’s side. Sessions won his last re-election with 97 percent of the vote. (And then he voted for all those tax cut and partial-birth abortion bills you idiot Republicans are so obsessed with — and which would never get a hearing in California.)
What was Trump’s winning issue, again? Three syllables … sounds like “BUILD THE WALL”? During the campaign, every time Trump came out with a new proposal on immigration, other Republicans would hysterically denounce him -– and then he’d soar in the polls.
Now that he’s tried everything else, can’t Trump try the issue that won him the election? We want to get tired of winning.
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Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2017.
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