a growing number of Republicans say Bannon’s continued embrace of Moore .. could undercut his ambitions to play kingmaker in 2018.
.. “It introduces a different variable for the candidates he supports,” said Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman for Breitbart News, the ultraconservative website run by Bannon. “They’re going to be asked how they feel about being supported by someone who stood by a sexual predator. All of that baggage now follows Bannon politically.”
.. A political operative close to Bannon said Bannon continues to support Moore because he believes Moore’s denials about the most serious charges leveled by the women who have come forward.
.. “He’s got people banging down his door to talk with him,” said one Bannon associate
.. The Mercer family, a major financial patron of Breitbart and an array of other Bannon projects, does not appear to be fully on board.
.. Sheldon Adelson said through a spokesman that he would not be supporting Bannon’s efforts to remake the Senate and was instead “supporting Mitch McConnell 100 percent.”
.. Bannon praised him during a Zionist Organization of America dinner in New York, saying Trump’s victory “wouldn’t have come” without the help of Adelson, a major donor to the organization.
.. the real question is whether Bannon will be able to attract significant funding beyond the Mercers.
.. “I don’t know a single major donor who’s interested in funding this,” Holmes said, referring to Bannon’s efforts as a “vanity project.”
.. “It’s thrown all of Donald Trump’s agenda into flux, for a race in a state that should be a put-away for Republicans,” Holmes said. “Right now, it’s not about winning, it’s not about accomplishing the president’s agenda. It’s about Steve Bannon.”
.. After the initial Moore story broke, he said, Bannon associates were on cable TV talking about the age of consent in Alabama when party leaders should have been spending their time touting plans for tax reform.
.. After the initial Moore story broke, he said, Bannon associates were on cable TV talking about the age of consent in Alabama when party leaders should have been spending their time touting plans for tax reform.
.. Bannon has also claimed two other Republican “scalps” this year with the announced retirements of Sens. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, two races he had said he was targeting.
.. One Bannon friend said he told him that he would be better off picking a few races where he could post early wins rather than announcing he was taking on the entire Republican establishment at once.