Mr. Brooks’s Presidential Proposal

Mo Brooks

Well, now – my congressman has launched a small tsunami.  Mo Brooks occupies the seat for North Alabama, including Huntsville, where I live.  This is the seat for which I ran some years ago and lost by 23 votes out of the 50,000 cast in the Republican primary.

Mr. Trump’s appointment of our senator, Jeff Sessions, to his Cabinet as attorney general has cast our state’s politics into turmoil, bordering on chaos.  By state law, the governor must appoint someone to occupy the seat as an interim senator until the next regular election in 2020, at which time a candidate will be elected for a full term.  At that time, the governor was Robert Bentley, M.D., a dermatologist from Tuscaloosa.

But it happened that Bentley had fallen prey to a serious neurosis: he was in love, and in an illicit relationship with an attractive aide, the sickness being made all the more severe by his age.  Secret tapes were available.  They were released to the public.  They painted a torrid, Hollywood-style romance, with each member being married to another.  The affair cast the governor in a most negative light, and in addition, there were accusations of unlawful behavior on his part.  Finally, the inevitable call to impeach the governor came, and it looked serious – so serious that Bentley resigned.  But before doing so, he appointed Luther Strange, the Alabama attorney general, to Sessions’s vacant Senate seat.  By virtue of his position, Strange would be the very one who would be the top prosecutor should Bentley go to trial.  And this prosecutor would have just received a golden political plum from the very man he would be prosecuting.

If you like really juicy politics, you are about to get it in full measure as we transition to Washington and the White House.

Sen. Sessions was one of Trump’s earliest and most loyal supporters, but Trump, whose ire is apparently raised relatively easily, had it skyrocket when Sessions recused himself from any investigation involving Hillary Clinton and any investigation bearing on the phantom case of Russia meddling in our election.  The president proceeded to publicly excoriate him.

A weaker man would have said to Hell with it and resigned.  But not Jeff.  He declared that he would stay put and do the job for which Trump had nominated him.  And so there it stands – at least at the moment I am writing this.

Enter my longtime friend, Mo Brooks.  Said Mo to the world, “If all the other candidates on the GOP ticket for the Senate in the special election will withdraw, I will, too.”  Then, with no Republican left on the GOP ticket, the GOP State Committee would be authorized to select a candidate of their choosing.  And according to the Brooks Plan, who do you suppose that might be?  Why, Mr. Jeff Sessions, of course!

Jeff, by now tired of Trump’s serial discourtesies, would resign as attorney general and accept his party’s nomination to fill again his old Senate seat – and, riding his immense popularity and respect, would win!

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. (Credit Image: © Yuri Gripas/Reuters via ZUMA Press)

He would serve as the epitome of the Southern gentleman, supporting Trump whenever he could, never showing a scintilla of anger or regret.  But then – as the 2020 election draws nigh – the GOP electorate, now grown weary of the Trumpian antics, and restless for a change, would naturally turn to Sessions, deck him with garlands worthy of a Roman hero, and elect him president!

Should Mo pull this off, he will have his oversized picture on page 1 above the fold in newspapers across the country.  But Mo, should he be struck with an episode of sanity, knows perfectly well that it will go nowhere.  And the reason is much too obvious: there are eight other ambitious Republicans in the race, and if just one balks and refuses to withdraw, that will void Mr. Brooks’s proposal.  Remember: he said he will withdraw if all the others do.

One of the eight has already made clear his refusal.   Luther Strange, occupying Jeff’s seat as an interim senator, spoke to our local paper, The Huntsville Times: “This is what a candidate does when he learns he’s plummeted to a distant third and is desperate to get attention.  Shame on Congressman Brooks for his lack of faith in President Trump’s Attorney General[‘s] commitment to work together to make America great again.”

So we should dismiss this ethereal cockamamie idea.

But wait – are we sure?  Depending on exactly how things evolve as we count down to year 2020, Jeff Sessions could declare his candidacy for president without asking anyone to drop out of any race.  President Sessions?  It’s not far-fetched.  In fact, some years ago, I attempted to spark a Draft Jeff Sessions Drive.  It drew the support of a few local officeholders, went so far as to get me and my inchoate effort mentioned in “The Hill,” but went no farther.  At the time, Jeff was not ready for such a thing, but he told me “he might be willing to ‘do something’ in the future.”  So the idea is unlikely to shock him.

We don’t know what might happen, but we can predict without fear of contradiction that something will happen, and it won’t be dull.