Jeff Sessions Should Enter AL Senate Primary, Defeat Roy Moore
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is like a bad penny. He keeps showing up at the most inopportune moments, and he just did it again for the second time within two years.
He announced Thursday afternoon that he’s going to run again for a U.S. Senate seat against the Democrat who defeated him before.
Pundits agree that the most vulnerable 2020 U.S. Senate seat will be that held by Alabama Democratic Doug Jones. He won it in a 2017 special election to fill the vacancy left By Jeff Sessions, who was appointed as President Donald Trump’s first attorney general.
Jones squeaked past Moore by fewer than 22,000 votes, winning a seat that had been solidly Republican for two decades. A year earlier Trump won 62 percent of that state’s voters to his side, versus the 34 percent Hillary Clinton won.
So far three other Republicans have declared their intention to run for the seat: U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, State Rep. Arnold Mooney, and Tommy Tuberville.
Pundits and strategists say that 2020 may bring as many as 10 more Republican candidates.
2020 will be a different ballgame than the 2017 special election. President Donald Trump will head the ballot and bring more GOP candidates along with him. On the minus side, however, Jones is not the typical Democrat, especially when considering the party’s hard turn to the left.
For that reason, coupled with the fact that he’ll be running as an incumbent, Republican strategist Ford O'Connell tells Newsmax that the Alabama race will likely be a tossup.
Abortion To Be Major Election Issue In 2020 U.S. Presidential Race
Abortion has vaulted to the forefront of issues in the lead up to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections, and experts said the issue may well become the Gordian knot in the race, dragging out the imminent fight between Democrats and Republicans.
Earlier this month, Kay Ivey, governor of the U.S. state of Alabama, signed a new law that would ban all abortions, except in cases in which the mother's life is in danger, in the latest challenge to the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade case that ruled that women have a right to have an abortion.
The Alabama law would make it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion, with the possibility of 99 years of imprisonment. Even victims of rape and incest would not be permitted to terminate their pregnancies.
The ban is the latest in a trend toward more restrictive abortion policies, with the U.S. states of Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Mississippi recently creating similar bans. Experts say all this is part of a GOP concerted effort to push the issue up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where anti-abortion supporters hope the court will strike down Roe v. Wade.
For their part, conservatives say the trend toward restricting abortions is a reaction to recent moves in states such as New York and Virginia to relax restrictions on late-term abortions.
TV news personality and Republican strategist Ford O'Connell told Xinhua that the new law in Alabama, as well as similar laws in other states, are a test-case, signed into law so they'll get pushed up to the Supreme Court in hopes that Roe v. Wade will be overturned.
O'Connell added that the spate of anti-abortion laws being passed in several states is a reaction to what many conservatives view as radical and immoral laws being pushed in states such as New York and Virginia. Such legislation seeks to make abortion legal even in the third trimester. Social conservatives, particularly evangelicals, which represent a large chunk of Trump's base, have strong views against such laws.
12 Senate Races More Important Than The Presidential Election
Many Americans are focusing on the 2020 presidential but the Senate races could be more important as Republican control is up for grabs. The party is seeking to hold onto its slim majority with 12 key seats being tested in this cycle.
The math seems to favor the Democrats. Twenty-two Republican seats are among the 34 up for re-election next year; 12 of those slots are in key states. If President Donald Trump loses re-election, Democrats need to flip only three seats to regain the Senate. If Trump wins, the party needs four.
With Trump as president and Democrats holding onto the House, and regaining the Senate, they are sure to stymie his agenda. But if a Democrat wins the White House — and the party controls both congressional chambers — they will undo Trump's record and push through their own legislative programs.
In many ways, the battle for control of the Senate is more important than for the White House, Republican strategist Ford O'Connell tells Newsmax.
"Essentially, Mitch McConnell is the last line of defense against socialism," he says, referring to the Kentucky Republican and Senate majority leader, who is also up for re-election next year.
"You block socialism if Trump wins," O'Connell adds. "If Trump loses, but McConnell's still in power, you still block socialism.
"It's an if-then: Trump helps McConnell keep the Senate. But if Trump goes down, then McConnell's got trouble."
Two other political observers, however, say 2020 will be a "top-down" contest, with the party winning the White House also taking Congress.
O'Connell tells Newsmax: "In Alabama, the Republicans should win unless [Roy] Moore's the nominee. Doug Jones is going to be out.
"A bad nominee can hurt you more than a good nominee can help you."
Alabama Abortion Ban Underscores U.S. Shift Toward Right
A new near-total abortion ban in the U.S. state of Alabama signals a conservative tilt in many parts of the United States, at a time when people on the left and right are increasingly divided, experts said.
On Wednesday, Kay Ivey, the state's governor, signed a new law that would ban all abortions, except in cases in which the mother's life is in danger, in the latest challenge to the 1973 landmark Supreme Court case that ruled that women have a right to have an abortion.
The Alabama law would make it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion, and even victims of rape and incest would not be permitted to terminate their pregnancies.
The ban is the latest in a trend toward more restrictive abortion policies, with the U.S. states of Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Mississippi recently creating similar bans, hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down the current law of the land, which considers many abortions to be a woman's right.
Some believe this is a reaction toward recent moves in states such as New York and Virginia to relax restrictions on late-term abortions.
A May 2018 Gallup poll found that 60 percent of the U.S. people believe abortion should be legal during the first trimester, although merely 13 percent believed women should be allowed to terminate their pregnancy during the third trimester.
"What you are seeing is people wanting to have a test case on what are the limits of (the current abortion laws) in front of the Supreme Court," Republican strategist and TV news personality Ford O'Connell told Xinhua.
Democrats Hope 2018 Is The Year They Take Back Power From Trump
Democrats enter 2018 hoping it will be the last year they are shut out of power in Washington. The midterm election campaign gives them a real shot at a place at the table — and, depending on the trajectory of the Russia probe, maybe even an opportunity to impeach President Trump.
Democrats only need to pick up two seats to retake the Senate, thanks to an upset victory in the Alabama special election last month, and 24 to control the House for the first time in eight years. Despite a larger GOP majority, the House is actually the easier bet. The party in power has lost seats in 18 of the last 20 midterm elections and when the president’s job approval rating is under 50 percent — Trump has been hovering around 40 percent — the average loss is 36 seats. Go all the way back to the Civil War and 35 out of 38 midterms have gone against the president’s party.
Democrats did go 0-4 in the special House races where both parties committed significant resources in 2017 (Trump likes to count Georgia's 6th Congressional District runoff to bump that total up to 0-5). But they capitalized on Republicans nominating a flawed candidate for Senate in Alabama to win a seat there for the first time since 1992 and did even better than expected in the Virginia gubernatorial election.
“Virginia is a blue state, period,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist. “Since 2005, Republicans have posted a dismal 1-10 record in major statewide elections (governor, senator and president). Going forward, Republicans may pick off an election here or there in the commonwealth but for the most part statewide offices are out of their reach for the foreseeable future, unless of course Northern Virginia somehow gets annexed to D.C.”
Nevertheless, the suburban uprising against Republicans bears watching. “[Republican Ed] Gillespie didn’t underperform; [Democrat Ralph] Northam outperformed,” O’Connell added. “You shouldn’t run from the president who is of the same party. But Virginia is not exactly Trump country, and Trump did not defeat Clinton last year in the commonwealth. So the overall notion that if Gillespie were somehow ‘Trumpier,’ he would have won, doesn’t hold water. What gets lost in all of the post-election hoopla is that Gillespie garnered more votes than the gubernatorial winners in 2001, 2005, 2009 and 2013 as well as the 2014 U.S. Senate victor, but in 2017 it was just not enough because Northam captured the most votes in Virginia gubernatorial history and really did well in suburbs and with voters 18-29.”
Read more from W. James Antle III at the Washington Examiner
Donald Trump Is Succeeding Where Hillary Clinton Failed—In Uniting Democrats
It’s been a good year for Democrats, and they have one man to thank for their success: President Donald J. Trump.
Even as activists fight over the direction of the party and relitigate the 2016 election, the left is riding high on its first Senate win in ruby-red Alabama in a quarter-century as well as two gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia. Democrats say single-digit losses in Republican strongholds like Georgia and Kansas also bode well for the strength of their party as it heads into next year's midterm elections.
“Democrats would be making a mistake to think that they’re all set because they won in Alabama,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist and George Washington University professor who worked on the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. “This was an absurd election, against an alleged child molester.”
Yes, the Republican Party is fractured, he said, but Democrats are also reconciling between the Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton camps. “Both sides are having trouble finding good candidates,” O'Connell said.
Even Republicans found a silver lining in the Moore loss. “The Democrats would have used his views to wrap a noose around Republicans’ necks,” O'Connell said. The Senate looks good for Republicans in 2018, but only if they can avoid running candidates like Moore. “The only question is if Republicans can actually stop their own dumbness,” he said.
Democrats will have to defend 25 Senate seats next year, including 10 in states that Trump won in 2016. In order to take control, they'll need to flip at least two of the eight Republican-held seats up for election.
Is Bannon Losing Stature After Alabama?
Once it became clear Tuesday evening that Democrat Doug Jones had won the critical U.S. Senate race in Alabama, the obvious "follow-up" question in the political community was how did this affect Steve Bannon.
The Breitbart chairman and former Trump White House Counselor was the "wingman" for the controversial Republican nominee in Alabama and former Chief Justice Roy Moore.
Bannon weighed in for Moore during his winning race for nomination against incumbent Luther Strange (who was appointed to the seat fomerly held by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions) and stood with him after charges from eight different women that the Republican nominee had behaved improperly toward them when they were teenagers.
According to several accounts, Bannon was pivotal in persuading President Trump to re-state his endorsement of Moore after Republicans from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on down abandoned the Alabamian.
So, after Moore's loss, Newsmax asked political scientists and operatives whether Steve Bannon is still the "player" he was within the conservtive movement and will he play a significant role in other primaries for U.S. Senate seats up for election in 2018?
Veteran GOP political consultant Ford O'Connell said, "Bannon should get a lot of grief for Alabama. But he is a survivor and he will try to wiggle out of this and shift the blame to McConnell and the establishment for Moore's loss."
Alabama Was Referendum on Nothing More Than Roy Moore
As soon as Fox News projected Democrat Doug Jones the winner of Alabama's U.S. Senate race Tuesday night, pundits and Democratic pols began proclaiming his win over Republican Roy Moore as a negative referendum on the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
That former U.S. attorney and first-time office-seeker Jones could come from nowhere to become the first Democrat to win a Senate seat from Alabama since 1992, they agreed, did not bode well for Republicans. Coupled with the Democratic win of the Virginia governorship last month, national Democrats were forecasting Jones' triumph as a "dress rehearsal" for big gains in the midterm elections of 2018.
But upon close scrutiny of what happened in the internationally-watched race in the Yellowhammer State, one finds it's all moonshine.
Even before eight women made the sensational charges of sexual misbehavior by Moore toward them when they were teenagers, the former chief justice of the state was considered a divisive political figure. He was removed as chief justice for violating his fellow jurists' vote not to put up a monument bearing the Ten Commandments, and then came back in 2012 to recapture his state's top judicial office -- and then was removed again for admonishing local and county officials to disobey the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.
"What Alabama voters told us more than anything else is that candidate quality matters," veteran national GOP consultant Ford O'Connell told us. "There is a limit on the amount of craziness they will accept. Had Luther Strange [the appointed senator beaten for nomination by Moore] or [Republican primary third-place finisher and Rep.] Mo Brooks been the nominee instead of Roy Moore, Republicans would have maintained the seat without breaking a sweat."
Not Your Parents' GOP
The Republican revolution of 1994 led onetime Democratic Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama to switch parties and become a proud member of the GOP. Next week's election in Alabama may define the beginning of the end of the senior senator's party as he's known it.
On one side are the firebrands, the ones who tacitly (or not so tacitly) affirm the views of white supremacists and neo-Nazis who have held rallies around the nation. They are the ones who have defended Alabama GOP Senate nominee Roy Moore, saying the accused child molester is the more moral contender in the race because he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.
On the other side is the so-called "establishment," the ones who wish Moore would just go away and who are aching to pass tax cuts and other conservative agenda items that were stymied for the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency.
But instead of being an embarrassing subject of the party, the fringe elements are capturing control of the GOP's image, if not its entire agenda. The distinguished Shelby says he wrote in another Republican for the open Senate seat but acknowledges there's nothing he can do to keep his home state from sending Moore to Washington.
"I think they're driving the dialogue," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell says of the far-right wing of the party – and it's because establishment Republicans need them, or think they need them, to govern. "One of the reasons you're seeing these folks drive the agenda, and other people are passively on board, is that there's a unique sense among Republican voters that like it or not, this is their best chance to get something done.
"They may not agree. They may not be happy with the president. I think what they're hoping is that winning is going to cure all, because losing hasn't cured anything for the Republican Party," adds O'Connell, who worked on the John McCain-Sarah Palin campaign in 2008.
Alabama Election Has GOP Racing Against The Clock
Republicans are feeling the pressure to move quickly on tax legislation ahead of next month’s Senate election in Alabama.
Senate Republicans already have little margin for error, as they can afford only two defections and still pass their tax-cut bill if Democrats are united against it.
But that margin would fall to one vote if the Democrat in the Alabama race, Doug Jones, defeats GOP candidate Roy Moore on Dec. 12. Polls have suggested a Jones victory is a real possibility in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against Moore.
An Alabama election official on Friday said the winner of the race could be seated as early as Dec. 26, giving Republicans a short window for action.
Republicans had already talked of getting a bill to President Trump’s desk by Christmas — and that deadline appears even more critical now, likely forcing a furious push in December.
“They’ve got to find a way to get to 50 votes [on a tax bill] as fast as possible,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
The House has already passed its version of the tax bill. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is planning to start floor consideration of the upper chamber bill’s next week, when senators return from the Thanksgiving recess.
