After eight hours of spirited testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, supporters agreed Sen. Jeff Sessions appears to be well on his way to winning confirmation as U.S. attorney general.
“Sen. Sessions is sailing toward confirmation,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, told us shortly after Sessions’ hearing concluded.
Sessions, according to Severino, “demonstrated he was committed to enforcing the law, regardless of what his personal position was. As attorney general, he said he would enforce the law as it stands and not as what he wants it to be.”
Severino, credited by the Washington Post as leader of the charge that kept Obama nominee Merrick Garland off the Supreme Court, added that Sessions’ promises to resign if the president took unconstitutional positions added to his character. In addition, his pledge to recuse himself from any investigation of Hillary Clinton “really took the wind out of the Democrats’ sails.”
Severino’s views on Sessions’ testimony were strongly seconded by Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation. “I think he responded calmly and courteously even to the nasty, insulting questions some Democratic senators asked him. They were unable to land a single blow on him. I think any ordinary American watching this outside of the Washington bubble would say that Sessions came across as reasonable, common-sense guy and ask what are the Democrats and the ACLU complaining about.”
Of the seven former U.S. senators who never made it to the Supreme Court or Cabinet, only one was actually rejected for confirmation by a full vote of the Senate: the late John Tower of Texas, who was turned down as President George H.W. Bush’s secretary of defense in 1989.
“And of nearly 600 Cabinet appointees in U.S. history, only about 5 percent have not made it through the confirmation process,” Donald L. Ritchie, former historian of the U.S. Senate said. “The odds point to confirmation of Sen. Sessions.”
Also another factor on behalf of four-term Sen. Sessions is history. According to the Office of the U.S. Senate Historian, only seven former U.S. Senators named to any Cabinet position or to the U.S. Supreme Court since 1793 have had their nominations withdrawn, postponed, rejected, or not reported or acted on by the Senate.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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