When Steve Bannon returned to Breitbart after being pushed out as Donald Trump’s chief strategist, he publicly maintained that he saw this as a chance to go to war for Trump. But Trump and Bannon now find themselves on opposite sides of the race for Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat in Alabama.
Trump is openly supporting Luther Strange, who was appointed to the Senate after Sessions was confirmed as Attorney General. Even though this is one of the few areas of the country where Trump still walks on water, it doesn’t seem to be helping Strange much. He finished a distant second in the Republican primary behind former state chief justice Roy Moore, and recent polls suggest that Strange is getting boatraced by the former Ten Commandments judge.
But Trump isn’t backing down. He’s flying down to Alabama next weekend to stump for Strange.
I will be in Huntsville, Alabama, on Saturday night to support Luther Strange for Senate. "Big Luther" is a great guy who gets things done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 16, 2017
Apparently Bannon isn’t of that mind. Just days after he left the White House, Bannon dropped by a closed-door meeting of the Conservative Action Project, a coalition of various conservative and tea party groups. At that gathering, he announced his support for Moore. He casts it as a declaration of “#War” against the Republican establishment–specifically, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has endorsed Strange and has pumped several million dollars worth of ads into the primary campaign. However, given Trump’s loud support for Strange, Bannon is–albeit unintentionally–in a battle with his messiah as well.
Bannon believes that if he can help Moore across the finish line, it could clear the way for hard-line primary challengers to Jeff Flake in Arizona, Dean Heller in Nevada, and Bob Corker in Tennessee. However, in his desire to make life more difficult for McConnell, Bannon may inadvertently risk making life difficult for Trump as well. The Arizona and Nevada races are going to be among the most competitive of the 2018 cycle. If Flake and Heller get dumped in the primary, it could open the door for Democrats to take their seats.
On paper, Bannon’s backing may be enough to get Moore over the finish line. But it could potentially come back to haunt him in the general election against Democrat Doug Jones. A recent poll from Emerson College shows Jones taking 39.9 percent to Moore’s 43.5 percent–just inside the poll’s 4.8 margin of error. This is absolutely staggering if true. Alabama hasn’t had a competitive Senate race since 1996, when Sessions won this seat over Democratic state senator Roger Bedford 52-45.
That raises the prospect that Moore might have to answer for being backed by a guy who has documented ties to white supremacist groups, frequently quotes from a horribly racist book, believes that blacks and those who don’t own property shouldn’t be allowed to vote. And he may have to answer for why he’s even thinking about teaming back up with notorious troll and pedophilia apologist Milo Yiannopoulos after tolerating his outrages at Breitbart for so long. And that’s on top of the fact that Moore may already have to answer for his appearances with Kevin Swanson, a rabidly homophobic pastor who believes gays should be put to death.
In his desire to burn the system down, Bannon may have inadvertently put Trump at risk for being hit with shrapnel. And in the process, he could potentially burn his own party.
(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
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