According to Paul Kane, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has the inside path to be the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will oversee David Souter’s replacement on the Supreme Court.
In an odd twist the man most likely to replace Specter as the top Republican on Judiciary is Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), whose early career ambition was not elected politics. A federal prosecutor in Alabama, Sessions was nominated in 1986 by Ronald Reagan to be a U.S. District Court judge, but Sessions was accused of having a racially insensitive attitude. The line of attack was led by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Biden, who GOP senators accused of using the nomination fight to appeal to interest groups in advance of his1988 presidential campaign.
Specter also opposed Sessions, whose nomination was dealt a final blow when his home-state senator, the late Howell Hefflin (D-Ala.), turned against him. A decade later Sessions exacted his revenge on Hefflin when he won his Senate seat in 1996 and then got appointed to the Judiciary Committee.
He was too racist to serve as a federal judge but now the Republicans want to put him in charge of vetting federal judges? Seriously? Maybe not, but only because he is so stupid.
Sessions is a much more ideological conservative than Specter, but he is not considered as sharp a questioner as the Pennsylvanian. That’s part of the reason why there are some murmurs among GOP staff that maybe one of the more veteran Republicans on the committee would instead take over as ranking member.
Could be Chuck Grassley if he is willing to give up his health care work as Ranking Member on the Finance Committee. That would be less embarrassing.
