When Congress returns in January, the Democrats will be gunning for several of President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees. The left has already launched negative narratives on several, especially Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Trump's pick for attorney general. Not only are the left-wing news media giving oxygen to these vitriolic attacks but in some cases they are the very authors.
On the front page on Christmas Day, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post published "profile" stories on Sessions obsessing over racial matters. The Times headline promised an exploration of his "thorny history on race."
Times reporter Del Quentin Wilber set the stage, saying: "As a boy, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III began each day before dawn, boarding a segregated bus to his all-white school. En route he and his classmates passed the bus ferrying black students in the opposite direction. The day ended when he sat down to dinner each night with his father, an avowed segregationist."
And just like that, Sessions has a racist past.
Wilber admitted, "By all accounts, Sessions has enjoyed lifelong friendships with African Americans, is respected by former black employees and has even earned recent praise from a top black state legislator." But even so -- he just couldn't leave it there -- "the conservative Republican's policy positions, decisions as a prosecutor and racially tinged comments have led many civil rights advocates to fear how he would enforce the nation's anti-discrimination laws."
Wilber allowed that Sessions wishes he had been a stronger advocate for black civil rights in his youth but "has not been able to shake questions about his views and positions on racial matters." Liberal newspapers will not cease raising the questions and concerns that they don't have for the senator's Democratic colleagues.
Take Rep. Keith Ellison, the far-left Muslim activist running to lead the Democratic Party. How many stories has the Times published since Election Day on Ellison's associations with radical Muslims and his militant positions against Israel? Zero. To beat a dead horse, just how concerned was the Times about the Ku Klux Klan membership of the late Sen. Robert Byrd?
The Washington Post headline was "For Jeff Sessions, history is inescapable." That's unintentionally hilarious. The Post has excelled in making Obama's personal history -- drug use, buying a house with crook Tony Rezko, his 9/11 cheerleader pal Rev. Jeremiah Wright and so much more -- completely escapable.
Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Sari Horwitz wrote, "Sessions's long record in public life reveals a man who has hired African Americans for senior positions who speak highly of him, but" -- here we go again -- "who has been sharply criticized by civil rights groups for his positions on voting rights, same-sex marriage and gender equality."
So, to be pro-traditional marriage is to be anti-civil rights.
Liberal newspapers never admit that their favorite civil rights advocates are solidly on the left and oppose Republicans pretty much across the board. The National Rifle Association is not a civil rights group in their book. Religious-liberties litigators fighting the Obama administration are not civil rights activists. One must subscribe to the tenets of the left to be an advocate for civil rights.
Senators know Sessions and his record, including the bipartisan accomplishments. He worked with then-Sen. Ted Kennedy in 2003 to reduce assault inside prisons. He joined with Sen. Dick Durbin in 2009 to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine. In 2011, he worked with Sen. Richard Blumenthal on a law to track down fugitive sex offenders.
On civil rights, Sessions has been praised by numerous black leaders. As the Times mentioned in passing, they include Alabama House Minority Leader Quinton Ross.
They tried a similar routine with John Ashcroft when he was nominated to lead the Justice Department 16 years ago. They tried to paint him as a racist for writing for a journal called the Southern Partisan. But eight Democrats crossed party lines to make it an easy confirmation vote. History is bound to repeat itself, but that won't stop these character assassins from trying.