Why does Jeff Sessions hate our troops?
I guess some Republicans really DO hate Mitt Romney. Look at his pals in the Senate who, in an election year no less, couldn’t bestir themselves to support a jobs bill for military veterans. Alabama’s own Jeff Sessions (R-jerkwad) led the opposition.
Romney had already taken heat for forgetting to mention our troops in combat during his convention speech. He made it worse when he responded to criticism of his omission (from Fox News, no less) not by apologizing but by once again slamming the president:
I only regret you’re repeating it day in and day out. When you give a speech you don’t go through a laundry list, you talk about the things that you think are important and I described in my speech, my commitment to a strong military unlike the president’s decision to cut our military. And I didn’t use the word troops, I used the word military. I think they refer to the same thing.
Yep, those kids in harm’s way are just an item he left off his laundry list. The cuts were, BTW, supported by his own running mate, but whatever, right?
The jobs bill was, per its sponsor, paid for by revenues generated in other areas. It would have allowed thousands of veterans the opportunity for employment as police officers, park workers, and firefighters That didn’t stop Sessions from objecting to the bill and rallying his buddies to keep it from coming to a vote. Lawrence Downes in the NYT today:
It would be easier to admire the Republicans’ late-breaking fiscal scrupulosity if their motives — denying the Obama administration any kind of victory this year, whatever the cost to jobless vets — weren’t so transparent. It’s probably useful to remind Republicans like John McCain (a “nay” on the jobs bill) that wounded, jobless and homeless veterans aren’t a fact of nature. They’re a product of the wars that Congress members voted for, the war debt they piled on, and the economy they helped ruin.
On the surface, it certainly would appear that their motive is to hurt Obama, but it looks to me more like a loss for Romney. If his own party won’t support the military it claims it loves best, how can he persuade veterans and their families that he’s a better bet than Obama, who supported the jobs bill?
Are Senate Republicans in reality just more rats jumping off the sinking Ship Romney? Makes you wonder. They’re just joining other conservatives who are covering their, um, bases in the face of what looks like a losing campaign.
But all the politics in the world don’t make up for the loss of the possibility of more jobs for veterans. It would be such poetic justice if Jeff Sessions loses his job the next time he comes up for re-election, and it would be even better if it were veterans leading the charge.
h/t maddowblog