Game Changer: Trump & Sen. Jeff Sessions Meeting

George Rasley, CHQ Editor | 8/17/2015

Establishment Republicans who were hoping that Donald Trump’s battle with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly portended the implosion of his presidential campaign were dealt a severe blow when it was revealed last week that Trump has been consulting Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Chairman of the Senate’s Immigration Subcommittee.



The reason this is so important – and really is a game changer – is that no one on the national scene understands the politics of populist opposition to open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens better than Senator Jeff Sessions.

Senator Sessions, a principled limited government constitutional conservative giant in comparison to the establishment Lilliputians that constitute the Senate’s Republican leadership, is one of the Senate’s most insightful students of the impact of immigration, both legal and illegal, on American workers.

Sessions has been one of the few opponents of amnesty for illegal aliens and opening America’s borders to regularly make the case that the most important reason to oppose the Obama-Rubio-Bush amnesty bill and other schemes to admit vast numbers of new immigrants, or legalize millions of illegal aliens, is the impact such policies would have on American workers.

As our friend Matt Boyle of Breitbart argued after the 2014 midterm elections, “It wasn’t until Sessions forcibly took control of the party message heading into the 2014 midterm elections that Republicans won big time, taking back the U.S. Senate and enlarging their House majority. That only came after a year plus of GOP infighting while [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul] Ryan, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joined forces with Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), pushing open borders immigration policies coupled with amnesty via the ‘Gang of Eight’ immigration bill.”

Senator Sessions is also one of the few national political figures to note that the alliance between the Republican establishment and corporate interests has been central to the break-up of the Reagan coalition that won Republicans two presidential election landslides.

“Americans overall, and especially middle-class Americans, have been pleading with their political leaders to end the lawlessness in immigration, to create a policy that serves the national interest, and to
protect them from excess labor flow that pulls down their wages and may cost them their jobs. … Congress, because of an unhealthy attachment to corporate America and political maneuvering, has refused to give it to them.

That’s a good and honorable request by the American people. … [It is] a policy that honestly benefits all blue-collar workers, and most of them fully support it [and] it would be a direct and powerful appeal to recent immigrants and to African-American blue-collar workers…” Senator Sessions told our friend Neil Munro of The Daily Caller.

Senator Sessions and Senator Ted Cruz have become the de facto leaders of the growing band of conservative populists on Capitol Hill. Despite not winning every legislative battle – just as the New Right lost the Panama Canal fight, but won the 1980 presidential election – conservative populists are building a grassroots army that is setting the agenda for the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

As Breitbart’s Julia Hahn detailed in her article revealing the Trump – Sessions meetings:
Sessions’ esteemed reputation on immigration is indeed well-earned. Sessions led the fight to stop the immigration expansion effort of 2006 and 2007, before leading the charge to derail the 2013 Gang of Eight bill. Following the 2007 implosion of McCain-Kennedy, the donor class has spent unprecedented sums of money [8] and organizational resources to try to pass legislation that would combine amnesty with a massive increase to record yearly immigration levels.

According to a 2013 report from the Sunlight foundation, between 2007 and 2012, lobbying groups spent more than $1.5 billion to pass immigration expansions. The centerpiece of the establishment donor class’s immigration push was the selection of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as the bill’s chief salesman. In the early days of the Gang of Eight push, when many conservatives were afraid to speak out against Rubio, Sen. Sessions began what started as a lonely one-man fight against the bill– issuing fact-checks on every false statement issued by Rubio’s office [See just few examples here [9], here [10], and here [11]].

In the face of the conservative populist wave building behind Trump and Cruz, the “donor class” of the Republican (and Democratic) Party – whom Sessions calls the “Masters of the Universe”—are losing influence in a big way over the Republican Party. Their candidates, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have been fading so fast under the heat of the conservative populist message of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz
that they have teed-up Ohio Governor John Kasich to step in if the other two open borders candidates flame out.

While the Wall Street – Washington – Silicon Valley Axis still clearly has a stranglehold over most of the congressional GOP leadership, on the campaign trail—especially the Republican presidential nomination contest—they’re losing control while Sessions’ populism is taking over.

And the proof of that is that no matter what polls you look at it, it’s a similar situation; the conservative populists, Trump and Cruz are rising, Bush and Rubio are fading. And if under Senator Sessions’ tutelage the Reagan coalition can be reassembled behind Trump or Cruz America’s workers just might win their war with the “Masters of the Universe.” That’s why Wall Street and their toadies in the Republican establishment are trembling and pulling out all the stops to derail Donald Trump’s campaign for President.

http://www.conservativehq.com/node/20897