Sources: Alabama Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby considering retirement after 2012 elections

Multiple independent sources tell IBCR that both Alabama Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby are “seriously” considering retirement following the 2012 elections.

Sources in Montgomery, Mobile and Birmingham indicate that both of the long-serving Senators are considering stepping aside, with Sessions being the most likely to announce his decision.

Sessions, first elected to the US Senate in 1996, has been one of the most outspoken and fervent conservatives in the upper chamber. He rose to the rank of Captain in the US Army and served as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama, then served as the Attorney General for the the state of Alabama before being elected to the Senate.

Sources also indicate—albeit with a “50/50” degree of confidence—that Sessions is on Mitt Romney’s short list as a running mate in the 2012 election.

Sessions’ strong conservative credentials and deep popularity in the southeastern US are seen as positive attributes as a running mate, and his military and law enforcement expertise are seen as providing balance to Romney’s private sector and business acumen.

Shelby was originally elected as a Democrat in 1986. He famously switched to the Republicans following the 1994 “Glorious Revolution,” when the GOP gained the majority in Congress midway through President Bill Clinton's first term. He was re-elected in 1998 and has faced no significant electoral opposition since.

Both US Senators have been strong conservative voices in the Senate.

In the 2010 elections, Republicans won a majority of both the Alabama Senate and the House of Representatives as well as the Governor’s office and all other state-wide offices of significance. Even many local seats switched hands and provided the Alabama GOP with the best “ground game” since the Reconstruction Era.

With Alabama safely in red hands for at least the foreseeable future, both of the highest profile statewide elected representatives see the 2012 through 2016 elections as opportunities for fresh faces to emerge.

Sources indicate that current Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne are quietly assembling campaign apparatus for runs at either or both seats.

Developing…

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Tea Party Losses in the Senate: Bad candidates or worth the risk?

Establishment-minded Republicans, like Karl Rove and Lindsey Graham, have been in the news pointing out that the reason why Tea Party favorites Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle and Ken Buck ran into so much trouble is because they were either (1) too conservative for the electorate whose votes they sought or (2) they were just bad candidates with bad campaigns. Or, both.

Lost in that message was the success of Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Nikki Haley. How did such Tea Party conservatives do so well while equally conservative O’Donnell, Angle and Buck fare so poorly?  Was it really that the former group were better candidates? Perhaps, but it doesn’t matter, especially in the Senate, and here’s why:

The rules of Senate debate limit the power and authority of the majority party. If you’re reading this blog, you’re already politically astute enough to understand what a filibuster is and what it takes to invoke cloture. Because only one-third of the US Senate is up for election each cycle, the house is naturally more resistant to wave changes like that which occurred in 1994.

As a result, when your party is poised to make significant gains in a midterm election it makes sense to take some risks with ideologically better candidates than play the safe cards with politically better candidates. We already knew, or at least should have known, that the Republicans were unlikely to take the Senate outright. And even had we done so, the effect of the victory would have been largely symbolic. The minority Democrats would still have had enough votes to filibuster any major legislative measure.

So why put liberal Republicans like Mike Castle in the US Senate? He’s no conservative and would have been a natural target for Democrats pushing cap and trade and amnesty. Why run such a candidate, have him win, and then have him turn coats and vote with liberals?

Why not take a risk with a Christine O’Donnell who, while admittedly a long-shot politically, would have been a slam dunk vote for a conservative legislative agenda? She only lost by 27,000 votes or so, in a deep blue state. With a little luck and a little more support, who knows what could have happened there?

Why put party apparatchik Sue Lowden up for US Senate in Nevada? Would she have had a better shot at knocking off Harry Reid than Sharron Angle did? Perhaps, but why not take the risk of installing a bona fide conservative?

The risk versus reward ratio is so off the charts here that anyone making the argument that candidates like Castle or Lowder would have made a real difference is doing so from an establishment perspective, not a conservative one. If your goal is to change the ideological makeup of the US Senate, you understand that its worth taking a risk on a less-than sure bet, if that risk pays off by installing a bona fide conservative. And, the payoff for settling for someone with and “R” after their name just to have enough votes to change majority leaders and committee chairmen is nothing more than political expediency.

We’ve had enough of politically expedient, establishment Republicans.  They do more damage than good.  If we have a chance—even a long shot chance—of installing a real conservative in the Senate, we should take it.

We did, and I for one have no regrets.