Former judge Roy Moore’s victory over Sen. Luther Strange was a sign of just how extreme Republican rank-and-filers have become. Moore, who believes biblical law should override the Constitution, beat Strange 55 percent to 45 percent. Contrast that with the 2006 gubernatorial primary in which then-Gov. Bob Riley trounced Moore by a margin of 2-to-1.
.. “What Donald Trump has done,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres, “is embolden the Roy Moores of the world.”
.. Trump was so embarrassed by his chosen big guy’s big defeat that he deleted earlier pro-Strange tweets
.. Trump seems to think that his support base is so loyal to him that it will follow him anywhere. Bannon would beg to differ. He threw his all behind Moore’s candidacy to show that Trump’s movement is attached even more to a rebellious right-wing ideology than it is to the president himself.
.. “What’s going on is bigger than Trump, and he is just a vehicle.”
.. The good news for Bannon is very bad news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who put millions of dollars behind the campaign to defeat Moore
.. Among other things, he has said that
- parts of America are under Muslim sharia law;
- suggested that the 9/11 attacks happened because the country had forsaken God’s “word and trust”;
- said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know”;
- and likened homosexuality to bestiality.
.. Advocates of a major undertaking on behalf of Jones see this as precisely why taking on Moore would be worth the gamble. Jones could do in Alabama this year what Republican Scott Brown did in a 2010 special election in Massachusetts
.. A Jones win would also cut the Republicans’ already tough-to-manage Senate majority to a bare 51 seats.
.. At an election eve Moore rally, Bannon called out McConnell and Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, by name.
.. “Your day of reckoning is coming,” Bannon declared.
.. The message from Alabama is clear; he and his party have unleashed forces they cannot control.