Jeff Sessions, Russia & McCarthyism

Here we go, fellow conservatarians. With the Democrats still on the rampage, and emboldened by their recent victory - the firing of  National Security Advisor Mike Flynn - they added another feather in their cap on Thursday by cornering U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and pressing him to recuse himself from any investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Nancy Pelosi, among others on the left, even called for Sessions' resignation.

The nation's top law enforcement official said "he did nothing wrong when he did not disclose during Senate testimony that he had met last year with Russia's ambassador. He said the meetings were in his capacity as senator, not as a campaign aide," according to Reuters.

I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign," Sessions told reporters at a hastily arranged news conference after several of his fellow Republicans in Congress called for him to recuse himself and Democrats urged him to resign.

When are the Republicans going to learn that they can not -- must not -- give in to democratic intimidation? This latest development makes crystal clear an argument made by The Nation earlier this week.

You heard that right -- The Nation -- a hard-left leaning publication that is always at the forefront of all things progressive and leftist.

Let’s face it; The Nation is not exactly a publication liberty-minded folks read often. But here at Liberty Nation, we not only call out the crazies, but we acknowledge those who lurch into the truth from time to time. Surprisingly The Nation has done just that in an article entitled “ Why We Must Oppose the Kremlin-Baiting Against Trump: The Russia-connected allegations have created an atmosphere of hysteria amounting to McCarthyism.” Yes, you read that right – that’s an actual headline in The Nation.

And Republicans, as well as administration officials, would do well to heed its warning.

In the article, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at New York University and Princeton, (not to mention spouse of The Nation publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel) Stephen F. Cohen, lays out a well-reasoned argument to halt what he calls “The bipartisan, nearly full-political-spectrum tsunami of factually unverified allegations that President Trump has been seditiously “compromised” by the Kremlin... .”  Cohen goes on to say what’s been happening concerning Trump and Russia is “deeply alarming.”

Indeed, it is. Because of Cohen’s depth of knowledge concerning Russian politics, he methodically addresses the full range of allegations which  have been leveled against the president for theoretical Russian connections that altered the electoral outcome in November. He begins by saying the following:

Begun by the Clinton campaign in mid-2016, and exemplified now by New York Times columnists (who write of a “Trump-Putin regime” in Washington), strident MSNBC hosts, and unbalanced CNN commentators, the practice [of unverified allegations] is growing into a latter-day McCarthyite hysteria. Such politically malignant practices should be deplored wherever they appear, whether on the part of conservatives, liberals, or progressives.

Naturally, there must be a method to this madness. And so, Cohen goes on delineate the internal motivations for these false claims and assertions:

The allegations are driven by political forces with various agendas: the Hillary Clinton wing of the Democratic Party, which wants to maintain its grip on the party by insisting that she didn’t lose the election but that it was stolen by Russian President Vladimir Putin for Trump; by enemies of Trump’s proposed détente with Russia, who want to discredit both him and Putin; and by Republicans and Democrats stunned that Trump essentially ran and won without either party, thereby threatening the established two-party system. Whatever the motivation, the ensuing slurs against Trump, which are already producing calls for his impeachment, pose grave threats to US and international security and to American democracy itself.

In his article, Cohen outlines six specific accusations that have been leveled at the president and then proceeds to debunk each and every one of them. In brief, he lists:

1. Trump’s supposed lavish praise of Russian leader Vladimir Putin

2. Trump/Russian business connections

3. The Paul Manafort relationship

4. The supposed Trump “dossier” published by BuzzFeed

5. Trump was responsible for and ordered the DNC hack

6. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s association with the Russians

Without substantive proof or even a shred of evidence that President Trump was involved in any of these activities, Cohen rightly asserts that we have nothing more than a lot of sound and fury – in this case, signifying a perilous outcome:

So far, no facts have been presented to back up the allegations. (Without facts, all of us are doomed to malpractice or worse.) An impartial investigation might search for such facts, if any exist, which should then be evaluated objectively—but neither may be possible in the current political atmosphere, only a witch hunt.

How right he is. Have we become a nation that lives and breathes by unnamed and anonymous sources? If so, this sets an alarming precedent. Only a few times in American history has political gamesmanship come frighteningly close to producing a chilling effect on the nation writ large. And this is one of them.

It’s telling that a call to stop this type of behavior is coming from the other side of the political spectrum. Far be it for me to end a Liberty Nation article with a quote from The Nation, but this is one case where they should have the last word. Mr. Cohen’s final salvo issues a sharp call to action:

President Eisenhower eventually stopped Joseph McCarthy. Who will stop the new McCarthyism before it spreads further into the “soul of democracy,” so revered by liberals and progressives? Facts might do so. But in lieu of facts, there are only professional ethics, decency, and patriotism.