Roy Moore “would not be the horse you would want to bet on first,” opined an anonymous source of Steve Bannon’s. Bannon’s goal as self-appointed GOP kingmaker was to remake the party in his own image, starting with getting Roy Moore elected after a divisive and passionately fought primary against Luther Strange. Bannon saw Moore as being the first of many right wing candidates that he endorsed that would be victorious at the polls. Unfortunately, with Moore in disgrace and Democrat Doug Jones leading in Alabama, it’s all gotten topsy turvy in Bannon World and the campaign is starting to come off the rails. First and foremost, the RNC announced they were pulling funding for Moore’s campaign a few days ago and lo and behold GOP mega donors are jumping ship as well. Washington Post:
Early this month, GOP mega-donor Robert Mercer announced that he was stepping down as co-chief executive of his hedge fund and selling his stake in Breitbart to his daughters.
In doing so, he wrote a letter distancing himself from Bannon in which he expressed concern that he at times had been mischaracterized in the press as “a white supremacist or a member of some other noxious group” and made clear that he would be making his own decisions about candidates to support financially.
A person familiar with Mercer’s thinking said in the past week that he does not plan to be “joined at the hip” with Bannon in his Senate efforts. In some cases, there could be overlap, but in other cases they could part ways, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about private conversations.
Mercer’s not the only one to entertain second thoughts about this Senatorial make-over of Bannon’s creation. Las Vegas casino tycoon and major GOP contributor Sheldon Adelson went on record last week as saying that he did not support Bannon’s efforts to recast the Senate and was instead, “supporting Mitch McConnell 100%.”
Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to McConnell thinks Bannon is not going to find the backing he needs to offer challenges for Senate seats in Mississippi, Wisconsin, Utah and Wyoming.
“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.”
If you’re wondering whether Steve Bannon is, “the delusional guy at his desk,” don’t forget, just last week he was spinning Ed Gillespie’s routing in Virginia as something positive:
Bannon’s instincts were shown to be off base when he suggested in a New York Times interview this month that Republican Ed Gillespie had closed the gap in the Virginia governor’s race by “rallying around the Trump agenda.”
“I think the big lesson for Tuesday is that, in Gillespie’s case, Trumpism without Trump can show the way forward,” Bannon told the Times. “If that’s the case, Democrats better be very, very worried.”
Somebody should be very, very worried and quite frankly, Steve? We think it’s you.
