Tuesday, July 14, 2020, is the Republican primary in Alabama for the Senate seat currently held by Democrat Doug Jones.
Defeating Jones is a must if Republicans are going to have a strong chance of holding the Senate.
Jones never should have been elected in the first place, but for the debacle with Republicans nominating Roy Moore for the 2017 special election to replace Jeff Sessions, who became U.S. Attorney General. Jones barely won the race, which would have been an easy win for anyone other than Moore.
Sessions, who was one of Trump’s earliest supporters, ended up recusing himself leading to the appointment of Robert Mueller, and well, the rest is Russia-collusion hoax history. Most important for present purposes, Sessions then resigned as Attorney General, and is running to get back his old seat. Trump, who is intensely bitter towards Sessions over Mueller-gate, has endorsed Sessions’ opponent in the runoff primary election, Tommy Tuberville.
Sessions has been all over Fox News and in advertising making the case that he is the best positioned to support the Trump agenda even if Trump supports his opponent.
Seems to me that Tuberville is riskier in the general election because he is less of a known quantity. There could be surprises. Quinn Hillyer writes, The national media will have a field day with Coach Tuberville:
When then-Auburn University head coach Tommy Tuberville made a brief appearance in the movie The Blind Side, his close friend and business partner John David Stroud appeared in the film with him, pretending to be an assistant coach looking at game films. Stroud later went to prison for investment fraud. Tuberville skated by with an out-of-court settlement.If Tuberville wins the July 14 Republican primary runoff for the U.S. Senate in Alabama against former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, it’s a certainty that this and other parts of Tuberville’s past suddenly will be subjected to the full investigative force of the politicized, hard-left newsroom of the New York Times and by other left-wing news outlets as well. That’s what the establishment media does to Republicans: It waits until the GOP is stuck with a nominee and then vets the nominee with an eye toward defeating him.Tuberville, as a political neophyte, never has been fully vetted. Sessions, on the other hand, is an entirely known quantity; there’s nothing the media can do to him to move his political needle further downward if he earns the nomination to face incumbent Democrat Sen. Doug Jones in November.On Tuberville, everything will be under scrutiny — his marital history, his recruiting practices, his treatment of black players, his Florida residency, his lack of knowledge of local Alabama issues, and of course, this investment scandal. He may be clean as a whistle, but if he’s not, the media will blow the whistle on him.
There may be nothing to the Tuberville concern, but can Republicans take a chance at losing what should be an easy pick-up?
I was going to do a reader poll, but there’s not a lot of time before tomorrow. I think Sessions will win the primary, and will easily defeat Doug Jones. If Tuberville wins the primary, every morning we will wake up waiting for a shoe to drop.
[Featured Image – Trump and Sessions in happier times, at Trump 2016 campaign rally]
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