By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
BIRMINGHAM—U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R from Alabama) declared that immigration was a losing issue for Democrats in the 2014 midterm election and vowed to fight an Executive Amnesty, which he declared was illegal.
Senator Sessions told the Associated Press’s Stephen Dinan, “Republicans campaigned for the House and Senate against the Obama-Senate immigration bill and on the pledge to block President Obama’s unlawful executive amnesty. The immediate emergency facing our new majority will be fighting the president’s disastrous planned actions, and we will have not only a constitutional mandate but also a popular mandate to do so.’”
Despite the crushing setback that not even many Republican pollsters were predicting, a defiant President Barack Hussein Obama (D) has threatened to use Executive Amnesty to give millions of illegal aliens legal status in this country while unilaterally using executive powers to open up the nation to even greater flows of legal immigrants.
Sen. Sessions warned, “A Republican Congress will defend itself and our citizens from these lawless actions. Surrendering to illegality is not an option. Democrats will have to choose sides: protect the President’s agenda, or protect your constituents.”
The Republican controlled U.S. House of Representatives has already passed a measure that would make any Executive Amnesty illegal, however Senate Democrats led by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D from Nevada) have refused to vote on that bill. Republicans are asking Democrats to pass that measure during the lame duck session which would make illegal President Barack Hussein Obama’s threatened unilateral actions on amnesty.
Sen. Sessions said, “Last night, the American people rebelled against the President’s Executive Amnesty and rallied behind GOP candidates who promised to put the needs of the American people first. It is shocking then that the President would declare that the only way ‘those Executive Actions go away,’ is to ‘send me a bill that I can sign.’ Otherwise, the President warned, he would ‘act in the absence of action by Congress. Of course, Congress has acted, and so have the American people. Republicans, and the voters who sent us here, rejected the Obama-Democrat legislation to give work permits to illegal immigrants and to surge already-record immigration rates. The President cannot, having had his policies defeated at the ballot box, impose them through Executive decree.”
In a post-election news conference, a defiant President Obama stood by his pledge to act on his own to reduce deportations, grant work permits and improve border security by the end of the year despite the crushing defeat of Democrats around the country.
Republicans Senate seats which were targeted by national Democrats, like Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska stayed in Republican hands; while Democrat seats which were targeted by Republicans including: Alaska, North Carolina, Arkansas, South Dakota, Colorado, Iowa, and Montana fell rapidly to GOP challengers. Republicans also picked up more House seats, governorships, state legislatures, and local offices on Tuesday.
Threats by pro-immigrant groups to make Republicans pay at the ballot box for not passing the President’s immigration reforms never materialized anywhere on election day. Democratic groups, like Empower Alabama, spent tens of millions registering new Democratic voters that never showed up to the polls.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R from Kentucky) said that for the President to now unilaterally pass an Executive Amnesty for five to seven million illegal aliens would be like, “Waving a red flag in front of a bull.” “I hope he won’t do that, because I do think it poisons the well for the opportunity to address a very important domestic issue.” Democrats spent a small fortune targeting Sen. McConnell’s reelection.
Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer said to Bret Baier, “Of course it (the midterm election) was about [President Obama], of course it was his ideology and the execution of his leadership. This was a wall to wall rejection of Obamaism and he pretended today as if it was an election that doesn’t have a lot of meaning, because two thirds of the electorate didn’t show up.”
Sen. Sessions is credited by many with lobbying enough resistance from both the public at large and within the House Republican Caucus to block the immigration reform bill that passed the Senate with bipartisan support from ever reaching the floor of the House.
It is believed that the new Republican Senate Majority will elect Sessions to be the new Budget Chairman. Sen. Sessions himself was re-elected on Tuesday, though the struggling Alabama Democratic Party could not even find a candidate who was willing to put their name on the ballot opposing Sen. Sessions. Senator Sessions is also a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
(Much of this report is based on original reporting by the Associated Press and the Fox News Channel).
