In October, Steve Bannon declared a “season of war” against the Republican establishment. Less than two months later, he might be staring down his Waterloo.
Bannon has made no secret of his desire to smash the current GOP order and replace it with a chaotic chorus of flame-throwing populists and ideologically ambiguous partisan agitators. In Republican Roy Moore, he found a touch of both — and it promptly blew up in his face.
Moore’s defeat at the hands of Democrat Doug Jones on Tuesday night is a damaging setback to President Trump and the GOP’s agenda for 2018 and beyond, but it is Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, who could suffer most immediately.
Bannon’s decision to stick by Moore despite credible reports of serial sexual impropriety against the judge — with molestation and assault among the allegations — and his role in securing a post-accusation endorsement from Trump, figures to damage his standing with the White House. Now, bereft of a significant general election victory to call his own, Bannon’s blitz is at risk of getting bogged down by a brewing GOP counteroffensive.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Breitbart boss commands a feisty pack of true believers. But their ranks are mostly static. Victory for Moore might have been enough to draft in new recruits and sway some Republican pragmatists to, at the least, make a show of bending to his instincts. Trump too, with his own stubborn support for Moore, seemed ready to give himself over to the Bannon way.
That’s all up for review now. A loss like the one Republicans suffered in Alabama will have everyone from the President to ambitious GOP dogcatchers tapping at the brakes. With the midterms looming, the party still has next-to-nothing to show, legislatively, for its year of unified control of Washington and Trump’s approval ratings seem anchored in the 30s. (Losing the seat will up the urgency of GOP tax reform efforts, too, as the party seeks to reconcile Senate and House versions before Jones is seated.)
Meanwhile, it’s still unclear precisely what Bannon wants to build after tearing down the party as it stands. And even if he did offer a more coherent vision, the Moore mess will only fuel doubts over whether he has the chops to pull it off.
On Wednesday morning, Bannon on his radio show credited the Democrats with outworking Republicans on the ground in Alabama. He also suggested, in what could be read as a jab at Sen. Richard Shelby’s tactic of choice, that write-in voters helped to sink his man. But he ultimately cast the loss as a minor stumbling block in what should be a generational fight.
“This is going to be five, 10, 15, 20 years, day in and day out,” he said. “Those who are prepared to do it, you’re going to win, have the fruits of victory. And those who are not prepared to do it, you’re gonna have, you’re gonna have defeats.”
The message is unlikely to land with his legion of intra-party enemies. If Bannon is some kind of miracle worker, his magic might be in restoring blood to the faces of Republicans on a night they lost a Senate seat the party held under lock and key for more than two decades.
GOP strategist Garrett Ventry, in a text after the race was called, said of Bannon: “The (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) should have him on the payroll after that mastermind performance helping to elect a Democrat in deep red Alabama costing Republicans a critical Senate seat.”
“This should be a wake-up call,” one Republican official in close touch with the White House told CNN’s Jeff Zeleny. Trump had plenty of friends warning him to steer clear of Moore. Bannon, of course, had other ideas.
The anger, cut with a measure of relief at his stumble, was apparent among Republicans allied with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentuckian is a frequent target for Bannon, who dedicated a particularly snide portion of his trolling speech last week at a Moore rally in Fairhope to “Mitch.”
In a short statement of his own, Steven Law, who runs the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, made no effort to hide his contempt.
“This (loss) is a brutal reminder that candidate quality matters regardless of where you are running,” said Law, a former top McConnell aide. “Not only did Steve Bannon cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country, but he also dragged the President of the United States into his fiasco.”
Another McConnell alumnus, former chief of staff Josh Holmes, had the knives out earlier in the evening. About 30 minutes after the polls closed, and a few hours after the first exit polls went public, he was already busy shepherding blame Bannon’s way.
“Before we get the results, I’d just like to thank Steve Bannon for showing us how to lose the reddest state in the union,” Holmes tweeted.
Meghan McCain, the daughter of Sen. John McCain, joined the dogpile later on with a vulgar missive.
For one night at least, there would be no open rejoinder. The Moore campaign refused to concede the race and Bannon never took the stage at their event in Alabama. Instead, it was Breitbart’s home page that spoke up in his place. Its post-mortem live update banner read, “UNIPARTY VICTORY,” and a flurry of headlines pinned the loss on familiar bêtes noires.
“ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICANS CHEER ROY MOORE’S LOSS,” blared one, followed by: “REPUBLICAN SABOTEURS FLIP SEAT TO DEMS.” And so it went, and so it goes for Bannon, whose anti-establishment “#war” suddenly looks at risk of drowning in the trenches.