National Review, a once-venerable conservative publication, has officially gone off the rails entirely, publishing an article calling Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) a “prostitute” for endorsing billionaire Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.
That abominable attack on perhaps the most revered conservative in the U.S. Senate ran in a National Review piece arguing that anyone who endorses Trump is a “rat” that is “scurrying” and is also a “sellout.”
“The Rats Are Scurrying: Republican Officeholders Who Endorse Trump Are Sellouts,” reads the headline of the article.
The piece, from Ian Tuttle, opens with the argument that Trump is exploiting a phony perception of a failed Republican Party to win the nomination. Tuttle writes:
The arch-villain in Donald Trump’s storybook account of American politics is the Republican party. The malign forces of progressivism may have been on the march for the past several years. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been hovering like Nazgûls over the bucolic expanses of middle America. Barack Obama has wielded vengefully the One Pen to Rule Them All. But it’s Republicans who are the real problem. The Grand Old Party has aided and abetted the country’s leftward lurch, proving themselves quislings and cowards all the way down, from John Boehner to John McCain.
Tuttle even attacks Breitbart News for daring to question the abject failures of GOP leaders including former House Speaker John Boehner and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). “Breitbart.com hath surveyed the nation, and, lo, there was not a conservative to be found among them!” Tuttle wrote.
Then Tuttle argues that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is angling for a position in a Trump administration—and that Christie didn’t endorse Trump for the right reasons. Tuttle continued:
On Friday, New Jersey governor Chris Christie endorsed Donald Trump in what was surely the most transparent display of affection since Judas Iscariot’s Gethsemane smooch. Not only had Christie spent the last several months blasting his tri-state opponent on the campaign trail — for, among other things, his absurd promise to make Mexico pay for a wall on the United States’ southern border, his proposed ban on Muslims entering the country, and his refusal to address entitlement reform — he reportedly told the New Hampshire Union Leader’s publisher, Joe McQuaid, that he would ‘never’ endorse Trump. Christie says McQuaid is misremembering.
Tuttle bashed Christie—once considered a leading Republican by many inside the beltway, but now somehow a traitor since endorsing the campaign of the GOP frontrunner who’s won three states so far in the primary—for another full paragraph before he turned his ire on Sessions. It was in this paragraph that Tuttle first made the reference to prostitutes. Tuttle wrote:
Presumably, Christie thinks an endorsement will increase the likelihood of his securing a position in a Trump administration (and given Trump’s financial history, that is a likelier prospect than his receiving 30 pieces of silver). But he has agreed to be, for the next several months, willingly at the end of Trump’s leash, evidence of which was Trump and Christie’s brief exchange after Christie’s speech in Arkansas: ‘Get on the plane and go home,’ Trump said, caught on a hot mic. ‘It’s over. Go home.’ There are pimps and prostitutes with more equitable relationships.
In the next paragraph, Tuttle amazingly compared Sessions to a prostitute.
“Speaking of prostitutes: On Sunday, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions offered Trump his own endorsement,” Tuttle wrote.
To put this in perspective, National Review’s own editor-in-chief, Rich Lowry, has praised Sessions as a white knight of conservatism in a dark world of fake Republicans.
Lowry told Breitbart News in November 2014 when Sessions was re-elected overwhelmingly in Alabama after running completely unopposed in both the primary and general election:
He’s up this time? I didn’t even know he was up; that shows you how unopposed he is. I can’t speak to specific politics in Alabama, but on a national level he’s extremely well-informed. He’s extremely energetic. He’s fearless. He’s proven himself year after year to be an absolutely indispensable outside voice and inside player on immigration and has really taken the lead in forwarding a populist-oriented agenda around that tone and around that issue. He’s really one of the most valuable senators we have, and I hope part of what’s going on in Alabama and that Alabama recognizes that.
Lowry and his publication have completely lost their minds, however, in their venom towards Trump. They ran a full issue titled “Against Trump,” in which they rounded up columnists and pundits from everywhere across the media to bash Trump as hard as they could. Their issue failed to resonate, though, as Trump proceeded to come in a strong second in Iowa to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—and Trump went on to commanding victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and then Nevada.
Trump is poised to do the same on Super Tuesday—win big nationwide—according to polling data leading into election day, and it’s unclear if even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Washington establishment’s last hope, can beat Trump in Rubio’s home state of Florida. Trump is polling way ahead of Rubio in Florida, an embarrassment to the first term senator who served as the personal amnesty pitchman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) when they worked on the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill together.
Lowry’s team political editor, Eliana Johnson, even once ran a glowingly lengthy profile of Sessions, calling him “Amnesty’s Worst Nightmare” in the headline.
“Sessions, 67, is a low-profile guy,” Johnson wrote. “Though he is not well known nationally, he has for years now been the instrumental force in quashing repeated attempts to pass comprehensive immigration reform. He has a gentle, almost grandfatherly quality, but he doesn’t shy away from combat.”
Now, clearly, all of that has changed as, since Sessions endorsed Trump, according to National Review, he is a “prostitute.”
To be fair, Tuttle’s piece does mention Sessions’ mettle on immigration. Tuttle wrote:
Sessions is, of course, the Republican party’s famous immigration hawk — a fierce, and fiercely intelligent, opponent of unchecked immigration, of amnesty, and of the various abuses of visa programs that large businesses use to undermine American labor. So, naturally, he endorsed the candidate who has proposed a de facto amnesty in which the federal government would first expend astronomical quantities of money and labor to round up 11 million illegal immigrants residing in the country, escort them to their home countries — and then let them back in (provided, of course, that they’re sufficiently ‘terrific’); he endorsed the candidate who has abused the H-2B visa system to import foreign workers to do ‘jobs Americans won’t do’ — like model fashion; and he endorsed the candidate who has employed illegal immigrants on his building projects as recently as July of last year.
But then Tuttle reasons that Sessions’ endorsement of Trump is also not genuine, and is somehow based on a belief that Trump is so far out there with his policy positions that he’ll have to implement at least some of them.
“Perhaps the senator thinks that Donald Trump, having touted his promises so publicly, will be made to go through with them,” Tuttle wrote. “If so, he should consult with Trump’s business associates, employees, and two ex-wives about the reliability of Mr. Trump’s promises.”
Tuttle went on to make similar attacks against Maine Gov. Paul LePage, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Chris Collins (R-NY).
“So, the Trump fans are right. The Republican party is full of people who care more about power than about conservatism,” Tuttle wrote. “How do we know? Because many of them are choosing to support Donald J. Trump. After all, there’s nothing conservative about Donald Trump.”
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