After He's Humiliated Tuesday, Trump Will Never Want To Set Foot In Alabama Again

The Women For Trump PAC is just the latest MAGA group to split from Señor Trumpanzee and embrace Roy Moore's overt fascism. Bretibart reported that "Women Vote Trump, the largest female-run PAC to support Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, announced their endorsement of Judge Roy Moore for U.S. Senate on Friday, describing him as the “only candidate” who will stand up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell... 'At a time when Mitch McConnell and the DC swamp have been obstructionists to the President’s agenda, this election is about who is going to stand up to Mitch McConnell,' the statement continued. 'There is only one candidate who will do that, Judge Roy Moore.' Moore’s opponent, U.S. Senator Luther Strange, remains the choice of Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment. Strange also received the endorsement of Trump himself, much to the frustration of many Trump supporters. In recent weeks, the Senate Leadership Fund, a PAC affiliated with McConnell, has flooded the state with a series of false attack ads against Moore. During a debate between the two candidates on Thursday evening, Strange spent much of his time touting what he called his 'close, personal friendship' with the President and referred 28 times to the fact that Trump endorsed him over Moore. A poll released Friday shows Moore with an eight-point lead over Strange."

Breitbart also reported that Señor Trumpanzee was doing his best at the Huntsville rally Friday "to characterize Sen. Luther Strange (R-AL) as a Washington outsider. 'He’s been in Washington for even less time than me. So he doesn’t know all these people he’s supposed to know,' Trump said. However, the characterization did not comport with reality. While Trump has lived in Washington, D.C. since January, Strange has spent eight years as a Washington, D.C. lobbyist for an Alabama-based gas utility company." In fact, every Bretibart top story but one was related to the Alabama Senate primary runoff coming on Tuesday. The biggest one of all was the silliest and most disparaging of Trumpanzee: Trump Claims Luther Strange Does Not Know Mitch McConnell, Despite Campaign Getting Millions from Him.

During a rally in support of Luther Strange’s election campaign, President Donald Trump attempted to distance any relationship between Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Strange despite McConnell-linked money streaming into the race and a report that McConnell handpicked Strange for the seat.

“He’s not a friend of Mitch McConnell. He doesn’t know Mitch McConnell, until just recently,” Trump said of Strange at Friday night’s rally for Strange. He added that he wasn’t saying that as a bad comment about “Mitch, at all.” “He just got there,” Trump said of Strange. He stated that he once asked Strange how well he knows McConnell and Strange claimed that he had just met McConnell.

“In fact… he just came out against that totally ridiculous rule, the filibuster rule, that’s ridiculous,” said Trump of Strange. He spoke of the 52 Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the need to have 60 votes to pass much legislation in that governing body.

However, Strange has spent significant time In Washington, D.C., and as a registered lobbyist.

The New York Times reported in February on Strange’s previous work with D.C.-establishment operative Karl Rove and their meeting in the 1990s. The report notes Strange’s time as a D.C. lobbyist and work for “a white-shoe Birmingham law firm with deep ties to the establishment wing of the Republican Party.” The report also highlighted McConnell’s enthusiasm for Strange and that Strange is “no stranger to the swamp.”

Strange ran the Washington, D.C., government affairs office for Sonat before returning to Alabama to join the establishment-connected Birmingham law firm.

Questions also remain after Strange asked the state legislature to suspend an investigation into then-Gov. Robert Bentley, which it did. Bentley appointed Strange to Sessions’ Senate seat. The Governor “denied any impropriety in his selection” according to the Times.

Bentley has been extremely clear that McConnell sent him a message about appointing Strange to the Senate seat. “I went by his office, and the first person that he actually mentioned was Luther Strange,” said Bentley, according to the Times. “He named several people, but the first one that he mentioned was Luther Strange.”

Not only was Strange reportedly McConnell’s first pick, but the McConnell-linked Senate Leadership Fund PAC has dropped millions and millions of dollars into the race. Just days ago the PAC sunk yet another $830,000 into the race.

Despite the many millions dumped into the race to prop up Strange, he has continually trailed his GOP opponent Judge Roy Moore in the polls. A statewide FOX10/Strategy Research poll conducted before a Thursday night debate between Moore and Strange was released on Friday. It showed Moore still leading Strange, 54-46.

Tomorrow night Bannon and the kook from Duck Dynasty are headlining a rally for Moore in Fairhope, just outside of Mobile, and Hannity has announced on Fox that he will be interviewing Bannon, live, at the rally. I haven't been able to find any traces of Mercer money in this though. I wonder if they just laundered it through other groups or if Bannon failed to persuade the fascist-minded Mercers to write any checks for this one.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org money is still flooding into the Alabama race just days before the vote. "Strange," they reported, "has raised $3.9 million and spent about $4.1 million as of Sept. 6, according to filings with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). The amount raised by his campaign more than doubles the $1.7 million then-Sen. Jeff Sessions received for his 2014 Senate bid. The majority of Strange’s financing has come from PACs, which make up 28.5 percent of his contributions, and large individual donors. Moore, on the other hand, has raised money predominantly from small and large individual donors with little to no support from PACs. According a Sept. 6 FEC filing, Moore’s campaign has raised $1.4 million and spent $1.1 million. As far as outside spending, the Solution Fund PAC has spent $54,000 in support of Moore while the Swamp Drainers Foundation and the Madison Project have spent $85,000 and $68,000 respectively in advertising and other communication materials against Strange."

McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund spent $733,000 bolstering Strange and $2.5 million attacking Moore, with whom he'll soon be serving. The NRA has spent over $1 million-- $874,000 in the last 2 weeks-- supporting Strange.

Friday, James Hohmann, offered an exhaustive last minute look at the race and Thursday's televised debate for Washington Post readers. He started by smirking that "If you took a shot of liquor every time Luther Strange name-dropped the president during a televised debate last night, you’d probably be too hammered to attend Donald Trump’s rally for him in Huntsville later today. Heck, depending on your tolerance, you might still be too hung over to go vote next Tuesday in the GOP runoff."

White House aides were deeply divided as recently as last week about whether Trump should risk humiliation by holding a rally for someone who trails in the polls.

After Strange had invoked him a few dozen times, Moore argued that the president was misled and manipulated into endorsing him by Senate Majority Leader McConnell. He noted that several of Trump’s former advisers have endorsed him, such as ex-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and former National Security Council aide Sebastian Gorka. “They know what President Trump stands for,” Moore said. “The problem is President Trump is being cut off in his office. He’s being redirected by people like McConnell, who do not support his agenda and will not support his agenda in the future. I think we need to go back and look at what’s going on.”

Strange feigned great umbrage at this line of attack and insisted that “it was not just a namby-pamby decision” when Trump chose to endorse him: “What you just said reveals a total lack of understanding of the president and of his character, and of his determination, and of his loyalty and of his friendship,” he replied. “I met Mitch McConnell about six or seven months ago. I’ve already stood up to him on many occasions. To suggest that the president of the United States, the head of the free world, a man who is changing the world, is being manipulated by Mitch McConnell is insulting to the president. It’s absolutely insulting to the president! That’s why he’s chosen me. He’s not being manipulated by anyone. As a matter of fact, many of the people who are supporting you look like the unemployment line at the White House. They were fired! They’re not there. There’s a reason for that: because the president is his own man. If anyone in this room... doubts that, that he can’t make up his mind without being influenced by someone, then you just misread the president. You just flat misread him!”

Moore ribbed Strange for how hard he sucks up to Trump. He noted that, as a registered lobbyist, Strange advocated for trade deals that Trump says are bad. He said that his opponent only endorsed blowing up the rules of the Senate so bills can pass with a simple majority after Trump called for it on Twitter. Then he attacked Strange for supporting Trump’s deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to raise the debt ceiling.

“This race is not me against the president... It’s me against Luther Strange,” he said. “I can’t tell you what the president thinks. I can’t tell you every move he makes, when he goes to the bathroom and when he doesn’t!... I do know Mr. Strange has been a lobbyist. That’s what a lobbyist does... You don’t get rid of lobbyists in the swamp by sending them to the United States Senate.”

Threading a delicate needle, Moore simultaneously sought to link himself with Trump. The most amusing example came when he noted that Trump attended a military academy for high school that is not far from West Point, where he went. He praised the president’s ban on transgender troops in the military. “I said that even before he said it! I agree with him very much on that,” said Moore.

...In both his opening and closing statements at the debate, Strange called next week’s vote a referendum on Trump: “It will be a test of our state and our people: Are we going to support our president? … Are we going to make America great again?”

During a post-debate rally for Moore, Sarah Palin echoed the message that Trump is being co-opted. “The forgotten man and woman in this country, they stood up, and we beat the swamp. But, alas, 10 months later, guys, the swamp, it's trying to hijack this presidency,” said Palin, the 2008 GOP nominee for vice president. “The swamp is trying to steal the victory that we worked so long and hard for-- to steal the victory that a lot of us put our reputations on the line for. We voted to put America first, not the political elite that had ignored us for decades.”

Palin described Moore as being “deplorable before deplorable was cool”: “A vote for Judge Moore isn't a vote against the president. It is a vote for the people's agenda that elected the president... The president needs support to keep the promises that elected him. So we're sending Trump someone who has our back, not Mitch McConnell's... Make no mistake, 'Big Luther' is Mitch McConnell's guy!”



...The final rally speaker was Moore himself, who took the stage as ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ blared... Moore told his the crowd... how it's more important for ‘the country to be good again’ than for it to be great again.”

I wonder what McConnell said to persuade Trump to overtly support the swamp. And I wonder if we'll ever find out. Trump knows he fucked up with this. "I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake," he told the crowd at one point during Friday night's loony rally. "If Luther doesn’t win they’re not going to say, we picked up 25 points in a short period of time. If his opponent wins, I’m going to be here campaigning like hell for him."

People have been asking me why we haven't taken a stand on the Democratic nominee, Doug Jones. He looks good on the issues and we did reach out to him-- a lot. But we never got any kind of a response at all. I've learned over the last decade or so that usually, when Democratic candidates don't respond to our attempts to contact them, there's a reason-- and it's not because they're too left-wing. Jones may be fine; but we have no way of knowing. I think he's probably counting on beating Moore (or Strange) by default. That's fine with me but that doesn't mean I'm sending him money or asking Blue America members to. These are the candidates we're supporting in the 2018 Senate races so far-- and we've talked to each and every one of them and we can vouch for each and every one of them without worrying they'll sell out when they get into office. But, yes, if I lived in Alabama, I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to vote for Jones in December.

Is The Kremlin Working To Turn Out An Audience For Trump And Strange In Alabama This Week?

Friday or Saturday (depending on if you're paying attention to Trumpanzee's tweets or to Luther Strange's campaign announcements], Trumpanzee is traipsing off to Huntsville to campaign for appointed incumbent Republican Senator Luther Strange, who is currently running several points behind far right psychopath Roy Moore (Bannon's candidate). Tuesday is the Republican primary runoff. Moore led in the first round and the 3rd place candidate, Mo Brooks, endorsed Moore last week.

Tuesday, Breitbart reported that the White House political department is flipping out in the fear that Trump won't draw a big enough crowd to satisfy his ego (and that he'll fire someone-- as he did after the debacle in Phoenix, where Bernie drew 4 times as many people as he did).

They already took down the size of the venue, from the Madison City Stadium, where Trump last stopped in Huntsville to the Von Braun Center's Propst Arena, which only holds 9,000 people. [Bretibart's reporting, as usual, is screwy on this since the Madison City Stadium is actually the slightly smaller venue.] The poorly-written report claims that "White House aides" told then that "they were worried about turning out a large crowd size for Trump, given they know the president has already given his endorsement and that he and the Vice President Mike Pence are campaigning for the establishment candidate against the presumed anti-establishment candidate."].

“It doesn’t look good to have them [Trump and Pence] stumping for the guy who is going to lose,” one White House official said.

Pence is slated to campaign in Birmingham on Monday for Strange.

Another, who wished not to be quoted, told Breitbart News that many people in the White House are concerned that Trump will be unimpressed with crowd size because Alabamians do not think highly of Strange given his lobbyist history.

“We have concerns that there may not be a high amount of turnout at the rallies for Strange and we are concerned that some of those that may show up may be there to shout pro-Roy Moore slogans–or that they just want to see the president and vice president but still plan to vote for Roy Moore,” a third White House aide told Breitbart News. “Translating this into votes for Luther Strange is going to be very difficult, if not impossible.”

After the February 2016 rally in nearby Madison, Trump told attendees the crowd was upwards of 30,000.

What they forgot to mention is that Trump is a congenital liar and that the Madison City Stadium only holds 7,000 people, not 30,000. But Trump demands that all sycophants around him accept his alternative reality as fact. Breitbart did report that "Law enforcement the day after that event put the figure much lower. Maj. Jim Cooke of the Madison Police Department told AL.com at the time the estimate was between 12,000-15,000 people in attendance, which is still significantly higher than the Von Braun Center’s capacity," more than double the capacity. There is some speculation that the Trump team has been frantically moving the date of the rally so as not to have to compete with football games which are very popular, as opposed to Trump's stale shtik, which no one is that interested in hearing any longer.

Still, the obvious way to go to solve this problem would be for the White House to go back to campaign mode when they had Russians manipulating Facebook to turn out audiences for Trump rallies-- a long way from when Trump was actually paying actors to pretend to be audience members.

The Kremlin-paid propagandists turned out audiences for Trump for about a dozen rallies in Florida during the campaign (which is illegal since foreign governments aren't allowed to give candidates in U.S. elections anything of value, even though defining a Trump fan as "something of value" might not hold up in a court of law).

The Aug. 20, 2016, events were collectively called “Florida Goes Trump!” and they were billed as a “patriotic state-wide flash mob,” unfolding simultaneously in 17 different cities and towns in the battleground state. It’s difficult to determine how many of those locations actually witnessed any turnout, in part because Facebook’s recent deletion of hundreds of Russian accounts hid much of the evidence. But videos and photos from two of the locations-- Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs-- were reposted to a Facebook page run by the local Trump campaign chair, where they remain to this day.

“On August 20, we want to gather patriots on the streets of Floridian towns and cities and march to unite America and support Donald Trump!” read the Facebook event page for the demonstrations. “Our flash mob will occur in several places at the same time; more details about locations will be added later. Go Donald!”

The Florida flash mob was one of at least four pro-Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrations conceived and organized over a Facebook page called “Being Patriotic,” and a related Twitter account called “march_for_trump.”  (The Daily Beast identified the accounts in a software-assisted review of politically themed social-media profiles.)

Being Patriotic had 200,000 followers and the strongest activist bent of any of the suspected Russian Facebook election pages that have so far emerged. Events promoted by the page last year included a July “Down With Hillary!” protest outside Clinton’s New York campaign headquarters, a September 11 pro-Trump demonstration in Manhattan, simultaneous “Miners for Trump” demonstrations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh in October, and a pro-Trump rally outside Trump Tower last November, after his election victory.

The Being Patriotic Facebook page was closed in August 2017—right when Facebook purged accounts secretly operated by a notorious St. Petersburg troll factory called Internet Research Agency. According to a public report by U.S. intelligence agencies (PDF), Internet Research Agency is financed by “a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.” Being Patriotic’s posts included scores of pro-Trump or anti-Clinton memes framed and watermarked in the same style as those found on the Heart of Texas and Secured Borders Facebook pages previously identified as Russian operations.

The Being Patriotic Twitter account was suspended at around the same time.

A Facebook spokesman told the Daily Beast the company was “not able to confirm any of the details here,” in response to a question about the Russian origin of Being Patriotic, but did not challenge the Daily Beast’s reporting.

On Sept. 6, Facebook acknowledged for the first time that inauthentic accounts from 2015 to 2017 promoted what the company’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, characterized as “divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum.” But Stamos said that most of the fraudulent activity it found-- some 3,000 ads connected to 470 now-shuttered accounts linked to Russian troll farms-- “didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting, or a particular candidate.”

After the Daily Beast found known Russian accounts that used Facebook’s Events tool to promote rallies inside the United States, the company said that it was not well positioned to determine “if something like coordination occurred” between the Trump campaign and Russia-- something investigators and security researchers doubt because of the social network’s massive trove of information on its customers.

But the discovery of the Being Patriotic rallies suggests that the fraudulent activity on Facebook did indeed involve messaging on behalf of Trump, did prompt at least some Americans to rally on Trump’s behalf, and did result in the Trump campaign volunteers subsequently sharing material from those events.

The pro-Trump events represent “the next level” of suspected Russian influence operations, said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who has testified about those operations to a Senate committee investigating them.

“This would be a direct effort that they attempted that’s more than online promotion,” Watts told the Daily Beast. “‘Let’s organize and try to get people to move to events in a proactive way around a candidate. Again, if it traces back to Russia, you can’t deny that’s foreign influence in an election.”

The page earned such a large following, a known Macedonian fake news distributor, Nikola Tanevski, purchased BeingPatriotic.com this year, but the page is currently dormant. Tanevski runs popular, pro-Trump fake news factories USATwentyFour.com and TheAmericanBacon.com. Attempts to reach Tanevski did not receive a response.

The layers of deception went beyond Facebook posts and manufactured rallies. When it wasn’t organizing events, Being Patriotic encouraged violence against minorities in incendiary posts. “Arrest and shoot every shithead taking part in burning our flag! #BLM vs #USA,” Being Patriotic’s Twitter account posted in April 2016, using the hashtag for the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

The account also advertised a toll-free “Being Patriotic Hotline” to report instances of voter fraud on Election Day.

“Detected a voter fraud? Tell us about it! Call 888-486-8102 or take photo/video and send it to us,” the account wrote on Nov. 8. Being Patriotic’s sister account, @March_for_Trump, plugged the same phone number, as well as a hotline for the “Trump Lawyer Team.” The number is now disconnected.

Not just Stone, Bannon & Palin... even Louie Gohmert is bucking Trump on this

When asked for comment, the White House referred the Daily Beast to the Trump campaign, which, in turn, did not respond to emailed questions. But Susie Wiles, who served as Trump’s campaign manager in Florida, told the Daily Beast that the Broward County portion of the flash mob “was not an official campaign event.”

That’s despite the fact that the event was promoted on “Official Donald J. Trump for President Campaign Facebook Page for Broward County, Florida.” Photos and videos of the demonstration were posted there afterward.

When emailed the link to the Facebook posting, Wiles told the Daily Beast: “There are groups such as this across the state-- and maybe other places, too. Groups of people get together and establish a presence such as this but it is unaffiliated with the campaign, per se. The photos ring no bells with me.”

Wiles also said that the Trump campaign’s purported Broward County Facebook page, which markets itself as being “official,” was not set up by the campaign.

“The Donald Trump campaign did not set these Facebook pages up,” she told the Daily Beast. “Rather, supporters (like the lady registered as the contact) set them up to support the campaign and subsequently the president.”

The “lady” registered as the contact is Dolly Trevino Rump, the Trump campaign’s chairwoman for Broward County who, until this April, was also the secretary of the local Republican Party. The Miami Herald described her as “perhaps Broward’s most famous Donald Trump fan.” Rump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast. Neither did the chairman of the Broward County Republican Party.

I wonder if they checked with Rupert Ditsworth/Tarsey, a major Tumpanzee supporter and Secretary of the Broward County Republican Party. I bet he knows what the Russians were up to. Or maybe Dana Rohrabacher? Matt Taibbi summed this all up earlier today at the Rolling Stone: "So McConnell has sold out to Trump, and Trump has sold out to McConnell, and it's Steve Bannon, who just weeks ago was kicked out of the White House, who is now playing the role of kingmaker in the Republican Party. The spectacle will achieve peak gruesomeness Thursday evening, when Sarah Palin and the also recently ousted Dr. Sebastian Gorka will campaign for Moore in Alabama. The event is sponsored by something called the MAGA Coalition, a new group not officially connected to Trump. (Charles Manson and the ghost of Heinrich Himmler were not available.) Having these two freak shows back-to-back-- Palin-Gorka Thursday, Trump-Strange Friday-- will offer the national media and the Republican electorate a reality-show-style standoff, cartoonizing the new divisions within the party... What a glorious disaster this is, all the way around. McConnell and company disgrace themselves totally by clinging to Trump's ankles. Trump betrays his own constituents and may soon represent the same 'swamp' he campaigned against. If the world is just, they will roast together for all eternity in the same boiling hell-cauldron."

Dana

Trumpanzee vs Bannon

Trump is taking on the onus of a losing battle in Alabama against his own base on behalf Mitch McConnell, who he's said to detest. Background: last year Trump pulverized all his Republican presidential primary opponents in Alabama:

• Senor Trumpanzee- 371,735 (43.4%)
• Cruz- 180,608 (21.1%)
• Rubio- 159,802 (18.7%)
• Carson- 87,517 (10.2%)
• Kasich- 37,970 (4.4%)
• Jeb- 3,946 (0.5%)
• Huckabee- 2,535 (0.3%)
• Paul- 1,879 (0.2%)
• Christie- 850 (0.1%)
• Santorum- 616 (0.1%)
• Fiorina- 543 (0.1%)
• Lindsey Graham- 254 (0.0%)

Alabama has 5 counties that share a border and media markets with Florida but the Sunshine State's senator, Little Marco, didn't come close to Trump in any of them. (In fact, in Houston, Geneva and Covington counties, Rubio came in 3rd.) Trump went on to obliterate Hillary in the general, 1,318,255 (62.08%) to 729,547 (34.36%). He out-performed McCain 2008 and Romney 2012. Alabama's wide-eyed, slack-jawed bumpkins found the 3-card monte hustler of their dreams. And while Trump's popularity has started drifting downward even in some red bastions... he's more popular than ever in a state where white nationalism and racism are the keys to most Republican voters' hearts.

Alabama Republicans have a primary run-off election a week from Tuesday, on September 26, pitting neo-fascist former Judge Roy Moore against almost equally extreme appointed incumbent Luther Strange. Bannon and nearly every bigot and neo-Nazi in America have gotten behind Moore and the Republican establishment has lined up behind Strange. Strangely, Trump wound up backing Strange, something he reluctantly reiterated on Twitter last night, promising to hold one of his crazy campaign rallies in Huntsville next Saturday, 3 days before Moore buries Strange.

Moore came in first in the primary, 164,524 (38.87%) to Strange's 138,971 (32.83%). Third place runner-up, far right crackpot Mo Brooks, endorsed Moore last night moments before Trump came out again for the faltering Strange. A poll from Emerson College last week showed Moore beating Strange 40-26%, with 34% of Republican voters still undecided. (Democrat Doug Jones, who will face the winner of the runoff December 12, is in a statistical dead heat with each one of them, but appears to fare best against Strange.)

As of the July 26 filing deadline, Strange had spent about $2 million dollars more than Moore-- $2,286,479 to $286,421. Strange had $934,268 cash on hand and Moore had $173,386. But that was before Bannon and Mercer got involved. No one knows quite what to expect from them aside from hot air. So far though, millions of dollars-- approaching $10-- have been spent by McConnell and his allies to bolster Strange. It hasn't done any good at all, as he's lost ground with every dollar the establishment has thrown in in his favor. Not even Trump's endorsement helped Strange in the first round. Last night, Politico's Alex Isenstadt, looked at the Trump vs Bannon aspect of the race. Señor Trumpanzee's decision yesterday "to intervene in the Alabama special election followed weeks of pleas from senior Republicans who fear that a loss will invite a wave of primary challenges against GOP incumbents and damage the party in the 2018 midterms." Yes... Bannon and Mercer have teamed up to destroy the Republican Party establishment-- and have claimed Trump "secretly" backs them.

Trump’s unexpected move sets the stage for a showdown between the president and his recently departed chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who is all-in for Moore. Bannon has cast the Alabama race as an-important clash between grass-roots conservatives and the Washington establishment-- and a test for whether other incumbent senators can be successfully challenged by insurgents in 2018.

In response, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other incumbent senators-- including Strange himself-- have leaned on the president for more help.

...Trump’s refusal until Saturday to commit to a pre-runoff rally fueled fears at the highest levels of the party that the unpredictable president would switch his endorsement to Moore. During a private meeting with Trump this month, McConnell, who views the race a top political priority, made a forceful case why Strange was the right candidate. The president told the leader he had no intention of withdrawing his support for the senator, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

...The save-Strange campaign comes at a time of growing concern in the GOP that lawmakers up for reelection in 2018 will face treacherous primary fights that divert party resources from unseating Democrats. Bannon has described the Alabama race as the initial front in a midterm war aimed at undermining McConnell.

A Moore win, Bannon has argued, could open the floodgates for conservative insurgents in states like Arizona, Nevada, and Tennessee. The addition of truculent conservatives backed by Bannon to the Senate could also make it more difficult for McConnell to corral his conference.

Bannon is working overtime on Moore’s behalf. The Breitbart chief held a private meeting with the former judge on Capitol Hill last week and is encouraging conservative power brokers to get behind Moore. An outside group that Bannon is aligned with, Great America Alliance, has begun advertising on Moore’s behalf. The group is also expected to host a pro-Moore rally headlined by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“The establishment should be worried,” said Andrew Surabian, who worked for Bannon in the White House and is a senior adviser to Great America Alliance. “Republican voters rejected all of their preferred candidates in the 2016 presidential primary, they’re in the midst of rejecting their golden boy in Alabama and I’m confident they will reject their never-Trump stalking horses running in 2018.”

McConnell has expressed concern privately that a post-Alabama avalanche of primary challengers could badly undermine the party’s midterm election prospects. Hoping to stem the tide, the McConnell-controlled National Republican Senatorial Committee has deployed staffers to the state, and a pro-McConnell super PAC has aired around $7 million worth of commercials, with roughly $1 million more set for the final week.

It's a remarkably large investment for a seat in a conservative state that is almost certain to remain in the party’s hands. Jeff Sessions had held the seat for two decades before becoming attorney general. Strange was appointed temporarily to fill the seat until a special election was held.

Trump shares little of McConnell’s interest in stopping Republican primaries-- in some instances, he has relished stoking them. Last month Trump flew to Arizona, where he attacked GOP Sen. Jeff Flake at a campaign-style rally and met with several potential challengers to the incumbent. McConnell has repeatedly pleaded with the White House to recognize the threat primaries pose to his conference, though he’s expressed uncertainty the president fully understands the problem.

Within the White House, there was widespread uncertainty about whether Trump would visit Alabama before the runoff. With polls showing Strange behind, aides were concerned about the president expending political capital in a southern state that helped to catapult his 2016 campaign. Trump’s team had considered several other, more limited options, such as cutting a robocall for Strange or tweeting in his favor.

...Regardless of what transpires in Alabama, some GOP officials are bracing for a brutal primary season pitting longtime lawmakers against flame-throwing challengers.

Particularly concerning, they say, has been McConnell's declining popularity in the wake of the failed health care repeal. In the weeks since, Moore has aggressively tied Strange to the Senate Republican leader, making McConnell a centerpiece in his TV ads. If Moore wins, his approach could serve as a template for other insurgent candidates.

The assault from pro-McConnell forces has allowed Moore to portray himself as the underdog. During a recent appearance before the Weyrich Lunch, a closed-door gathering of conservative leaders in Washington, Moore said the Washington establishment wants nothing more than to bring him down.

“This is a fight,” said Moore adviser Brett Doster, “between Luke Skywalker and the Death Star.”

Is there any doubt who national security adviser H.R. McMaster was talking about when he was interviewed on Fox News Sunday this morning and said, "The National Security Council...has served the president well in bringing him multiple options... There were some who tried to operate outside of that process for their own narrow agendas and that didn't serve the president well."

Michael Scherer and Matea Gold were busy on a similar story for the Washington Post last night. "If 'war' against the Republican establishment," they wrote, "is what former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon wants, then war is what he will get. Deep-pocketed supporters of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and other GOP leaders have resolved to fight a protracted battle over the next year for the soul of the party in congressional primaries. 'It’s shaping up to be McConnell, the Senate Leadership Fund and the Chamber against Bannon,' said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 'And we will take that fight.'" This is music to the ears of Washington Democrats, who need the help... badly.

But the task will not be easy. Strategists from both sides of the party’s divide say recent focus groups and polling have shown that the frustration within the Republican base has only grown since the 2016 election, stoked by an inability to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health-care law. President Trump, meanwhile, has continued to cast his presidency in opposition to the current ways of Washington, which could encourage primary voters to buck the system in a way that endangers House and Senate incumbents.

...In a sign of fights to come, the two Republican candidates are now competing to demonstrate their disgust with Washington politics. Strange, who was appointed this year to take the seat of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, begins one of his most recent television ads looking at the camera and announcing that he is “mad at Washington politicians.”

Moore describes his campaign as an effort to hurt McConnell, drain the swamp and bring more radical policies to the Senate, including a possible effort to impeach sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices for affirming the constitutionality of same-sex marriages.

Although Trump has endorsed Strange, Bannon is backing Moore-- and using the conservative website he runs, Breitbart News, to hammer the incumbent as a “swamp monster.”

Allies of McConnell have been blanketing the Alabama airwaves to shrink Moore’s polling lead. After spending nearly $4 million on ads before the first primary vote in August, the Senate Leadership Fund plans to blitz the state with another $4 million before the Sept. 26 runoff. So far this year, the super PAC has raised more than $11 million, including a $1 million infusion from hedge fund manager Paul Singer [the very personification of The Swamp] last month, federal filings show.

The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have also sunk money into the race to defend Strange. The Business Council of Alabama, working with the U.S. Chamber, plans a major employee get-out-the-vote operation to support Strange by arguing that he will be better for the state’s industry and jobs. The chamber has also paid for a statewide mailer and an ad campaign that will include a spot during Saturday’s Alabama and Auburn college football games. “There is no taking it back,” Reed said. “Alabama is the big enchilada.”

The Senate Leadership Fund is also taking aim at Bannon himself in an effort to tarnish his position as a champion of the Trump political movement. Law released a statement on Tuesday calling Bannon “dead wrong” for using a recent 60 Minutes interview to criticize Trump’s decision to fire former FBI director James B. Comey.

At the Chamber, Reed echoed the criticism of Bannon for breaking with Trump. “He is turning into a rallying point for the alt-right, which is kind of bizarre because half of what he does is damage his former client and friend, whom he served as chief strategist for,” Reed said.

Bannon declined to comment. But a person familiar with his thinking described the pushback by McConnell allies as “the corrupt and incompetent political class” taking on Trump’s base.

Bannon’s allies scoffed at the notion that the McConnell-allied groups could drive a wedge between Trump’s supporters and Bannon. “At the end of the day, folks like that think the president’s base is stupid,” said a person close to the conservative media executive. “It shows the arrogance of the Republican political class in Washington.”

To counter the onslaught against Moore, the conservative advocacy group Great America Alliance, which is now overseen by Bannon protege and former deputy White House political director Andy Surabian, released a digital ad Tuesday featuring a montage of grainy photos of McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) that argues over a rock-n-roll score that Strange was “appointed by the swamp.”

The group and its allies do not intend to match the volume of anti-Moore ads on television, but there are plans for a bus tour of the state by conservative activists in the next couple of weeks to support the Moore campaign, culminating in a major rally before the election. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has endorsed Moore, is expected to travel to Alabama to appear as part of the tour.

And Moore allies have hope that their side will see an infusion of big money, too. Great America and its sister super PAC have new links to Bannon and his political patrons, the wealthy Mercer family. The former White House strategist does not have a formal role with the organizations, but he helped install Surabian as the top strategist at the advocacy group, according to a person familiar with his role.

Ed Rollins, the veteran GOP strategist who leads Great America PAC, said he has recently “exchanged some ideas” with Bannon, for whom he said he has “great respect.” And he has also been in talks with the Mercers, influential but idiosyncratic donors who often buck the GOP party establishment.

“We are having discussions but no formal ties at this point,” Rollins said of the family. “The more we can get going in the same direction, the better. We certainly have had some conversations.”

If they decide to put serious sums into groups taking on establishment candidates, hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer and his middle daughter, Rebekah, could help fuel the GOP’s latest internecine battles. Before supporting Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign, they gave $13.5 million to a super PAC that backed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s longest-lasting challenger for the nomination.

A spokeswoman for the Mercer family did not respond to a request for comment.

But there are already indications the Mercers plan to use their money to take on GOP incumbents this cycle. In late July, Robert Mercer gave $300,000 to a super PAC allied with former Arizona state senator Kelli Ward, who is challenging Republican Sen. Jeff Flake in the state’s primary, federal filings show.

Mercer also contributed $50,000 this summer to a new super PAC, Remember Mississippi, set up by an aide to state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who is considering challenging GOP incumbent Sen. Roger Wicker in the state.

Meanwhile, the pro-Trump super PAC America First and its sister advocacy group-- which have emerged as the president’s officially approved outside groups-- have largely stayed out of the intraparty fights. Since making a small digital ad buy for Strange in early August, before the first round of voting in the Alabama special election, the PAC has not invested any money in the contest.

Trump’s own apparent ambivalence over the Alabama race hints at the complicating factor he is likely to play in the coming fights. Although he endorsed Strange, he has not yet cut any political advertisements.

After the first round of primary elections, he tweeted congratulations to both men who made it through to the runoff, notably listing Moore’s name first. “Congratulation to Roy Moore and Luther Strange,” the tweet said, adding, “Exciting race!”

...Republican strategists aiming to defend incumbents say they expect Trump to be an unreliable partner in the coming season. The president tends to approach questions of political loyalty on a case-by-case basis instead of as a party leader. And he is intent on keeping some distance from Republican congressional leadership, which has so far failed to deliver on his promise of Obamacare repeal.

In many ways, the coming 2018 contests will be a rematch of high-stakes primary fights that have taken place every two years since the 2008 election, when self-branded tea party challengers began trying to unseat incumbent Republicans. Flake and Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who both face reelection next year, expect populist primary challenges this year. Several primary contests will be for seats with no Republican incumbent, such as those in Michigan, Montana and possibly Utah, where party insiders worry that the more anti-establishment candidates could jeopardize Republicans’ general-election hopes.

“2018 is going to be a wave election, and it is going to be an anti-incumbent wave election,” said Eagle Forum Fund President Ed Martin, who has been traveling the country to hold events to pressure moderate Republicans to support the Trump agenda. “Any Republican that is in office as an incumbent is on the line.”

After the 2010 and 2012 elections, which saw Republicans lose Senate races in Missouri, Delaware, Indiana, Colorado and Nevada with tea party candidates, both the Chamber and McConnell decided to be more aggressive in Senate primaries. Since then, the insider powers have tended to have the upper hand, winning the Senate elections they have contested in the primary. McConnell himself survived a tough tea party challenge in 2014, and a huge influx of television spending helped Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) hold off a strong primary challenge that same year.

Enjoy the show; buy plenty of popcorn-- and please consider helping elect progressives to replace a weakened, depleted and bloodied Republican Party. Don't leave it to the DSCC and the DCCC or we'll just wind up with nothing but another version of The Swamp Americans are so, so sick of.

Trumpanzee Plays Electoral Politics In Alabama And Nevada-- As Democrats Quietly Watch A GOP Civil War Break Out

After the Alabama primary, Señor Trumpanzee made one flaccid attempt to paint his rejection by Alabama Republican voters as a plus. He tweeted that his defeated candidate, inchmbent Luther Strange-- upon whom McConnell and a Trump-directed SuperPAC spent millions of dollars-- "picked up a lot of additional support since my endorsement." The final count in the Republican primary was 164,524 (38.87%) for crackpot Roy Moore and 138,971 (32.83%) for Trump and McConnell-backed establishment incumbent Luther Strange. [Another crackpot, Rep. Mo Brooks took 83,287 votes (19.68%) and a scattering of 7 vanity candidates split another 30-some-odd thousand votes between them.] Moore and Strange will face off in a runoff on September 26, the winner of which will then face Democrat Doug Jones, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, who won his 8-person primary with 109,105 votes (66.12%) on December 12.

Moore is more of a Trump candidate than Strange-- but its likely no one told that to Trump. So he backed the wrong horse. Thursday, Sarah Palin endorsed Moore. "Glad he’s running and am honored to endorse Judge Roy Moore for the US Senate," reads her statement. "Judge Moore has shown he has what it takes to stand up to the out-of-touch political establishment. The Judge has proven he’s not afraid of a fight for what is right, and he’s ready to take on DC’s swamp monsters and help make America great again. We need more bold leaders like Judge Moore who will fight for all of us in the US Senate." Kind of makes Señor Trumpanzee seem like a weenie.

Polling has been consistent since the run-off, showing Moore ahead of Strange. JMC found Moore crushing Strange 51-32% and the more mainstream Decision Desk HQ found nearly identical results last week-- Moore 50.3% to Strange 32.2%.

Trump doesn't want to look like a loser-- especially since Strange is identified as the McConnell candidate-- a big part of why he's losing-- and Trump is in the middle of one of his childish spats with McConnell. Robert Costa reported on Friday evening that Trump wants to disassociate from the Strange campaign. This is going to further infuriate Senate Republicans, many of whom already hate Trump passionately.

Trump did not signal a desire this week to formally withdraw his endorsement of Strange, the Republicans said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. And with the president having proven to be unpredictable, the individuals offered no certainty that he would stay out of the runoff.

But Trump is considering being less engaged than in the first round of voting, when he tweeted his support and recorded a robo-call for the senator, they said-- potentially turning the contest into yet another example of the frayed relationship between Trump and McConnell.

The Republicans added that the calculus being made in Trump’s orbit is logical. With a bevy of challenges on Capitol Hill this fall, the president is unlikely to have much time or political capital to spend on Strange’s campaign. On Friday, Trump and Vice President Pence called Strange to assure him of their support but made no specific plans to campaign on his behalf, according to two people with knowledge of the call.

...With Strange in the Senate, McConnell’s job would be easier than with Moore, a far-right fire-thrower who sent a fundraising email this week with the subject line, “It’s time to take King McConnell’s crown.” A Moore win also would raise the possibility that future Republican Senate candidates would run on an anti-McConnell promise, especially in red-state primary races-- putting his leadership in jeopardy.

For Trump, who has built a brand on winning, a Strange loss in Alabama could tarnish his image as a titan of the Republican base and raise questions about how much sway he holds in down-ballot contests heading into the midterm elections.

Now let's read this report on the Alabama primary run-off in the context of another bizarre report out of the tumultuous, contentious West Wing. Saturday morning Niall Stanage reported that Trump's allies are telling him he needs a high-profile Republican scalp. Chuck Schumer couldn't write this insane scenario any better than the way it's playing out in real time. Trump advisors-- think, for example, certifiably insane Roger Stone (the one who encouraged Trump to pardon Arpaio)-- are telling him that he "needs to instill fear so that lawmakers do not feel at liberty to thwart him."

“Most members of Congress are arrogant, and until a scalp is actually taken they are going to continue to be defiant,” longtime Trump friend Roger Stone told The Hill. “All he needs to do is punish one incumbent and I think you’d see a sea-change.”

Advice like Stone’s feeds the president's instincts to hit back hard against those whom he believes have wronged him: a list that at present appears to include Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as well as GOP Sens. John McCain (AZ), Jeff Flake (AZ) and Bob Corker (TN).

Trump’s biggest defeat to date, on his attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act, came at the hands of McCain and Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who joined Democrats to sink a Senate bill.

Other Trump loyalists join Stone in arguing that the president should neither forgive nor forget.

“He is 100 percent correct to go after McCain, Flake, Murkowksi,” said Sam Nunberg, who worked as an aide to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

  Nunberg also expressed the hope that Trump would be able to engineer the defeat of Collins in a GOP primary if she sought to become Maine’s governor.

But Nunberg drew a distinction between those senators who have been critical of Trump and the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill.

“I do think it is counterproductive for him to have a strained relationship with Leader McConnell,” Nunberg said, citing both the danger to Trump’s legislative agenda and the widespread support McConnell enjoys among his colleagues.

Steve Bannon, recently ousted as Trump’s chief strategist, does not appear to be in a compromising mood, however. He promised to keep up his own attacks on McConnell in an interview published by The Economist on Friday.

  “I’m going to light him up,” Bannon said.

Trump himself seems in no particular mood to declare a truce.

“The only problem I have with Mitch McConnell is that, after hearing Repeal & Replace for 7 years, he failed! That should NEVER have happened!” the president wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

...The strategic wisdom of those moves is lampooned by moderate Republicans. They note that Trump has achieved nothing of real legislative consequence so far in his presidency, and suggest that his fractious personality costs him goodwill on Capitol Hill.

“He doesn’t make it any easier to support him,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant and pollster who worked for the 2016 GOP primary campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Trump’s willingness to hit back against those who don’t follow his wishes may be an integral part of his personality, however. Longtime Trump-watchers say the same impulse was evident in his years as a real estate developer, reality TV star and fixture of the New York tabloids.

“He drives everything from the point of trying to always appear to be the winner-- and not brooking dissent from anyone,” said Timothy O’Brien, the author of a biography of Trump and the executive editor of Bloomberg View. “He personally is always prioritizing conflict and bravado so he stays center-stage and is perceived as the winner.”

O’Brien asserted that any advisors fueling that tendency and encouraging him to “slap” at McConnell on a regular basis were politically “daft.”

There are even some internal party critics of Trump’s, however, who don’t dismiss his words out of hand.

Appearing on Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio show on Thursday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of Trump, “He’s running against Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and others. The Congress is very unpopular, particularly with the Republican base, so there’s nothing unhinged about it. It’s a political strategy that I’m not so sure is smart, but it’s a very thought-out strategy. There’s nothing crazy about it.”

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-leaning firm, last month found only 30 percent of Republicans approving of McConnell’s job performance, while 46 percent disapproved. For Trump, 81 percent of Republicans approved and only 16 percent disapproved.

In five major polls this month-- from Gallup, CNN, CBS News, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University-- overall public approval of Congress never exceeded 20 percent. Even Trump, whose poll ratings are historically low, scores roughly twice as well as that in most surveys.

The Harvard-Harris poll published by The Hill this week found McConnell to be the most unpopular politician in the country with a national profile.

Stone argued that Trump is “far more popular and more influential with Republican primary voters than any members of Congress and any member of the United States Senate, and he has enormous leverage to go into party primaries.”

The strategist lamented Trump’s decision to endorse incumbent Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.) in the special election in that state. Strange is also strongly backed by McConnell.

  ...“Really, the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate needs to get behind President Trump and his agenda,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the president and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots. “I think it is fair for him to shed light on what is really happening on Capitol Hill.

“The voters voted for Donald Trump to be a sledgehammer and a wrecking ball to Washington, D.C.,” she added.

How quickly they seem to have forgotten Nevada Republican Dean Heller. It seemed like only yesterday that a Trump/Pence-controlled PAC was running this ad against Heller in Las Vegas and Nevada:



Palin jumped into this race too-- endorsing a nutcase extremist, Danny Tarkanian, as a primary challenger and guess what-- a new poll from JMC Analytics shows Tarkanian leading Heller 39-31% among likely GOP primary voters. JMC: "This is one primary race where President Trump’s involvement could make a difference. Republicans in Nevada give him an 80-14% approval rating, and a Trump endorsement would by a 64-13% margin make the respondent more likely to support his endorsed candidate. And given Tarkanian’s recent strong endorsement of Trump policies, it appears some of that is already happening: those more likely to be impacted by a Trump endorsement favor Tarkanian 43-30% over Heller (27% undecided), while those less likely to be impacted by a Trump endorsement favor Heller 35-23% (42% undecided). Those who say the endorsement doesn’t matter favor Tarkanian 35-31% (35% undecided)-- these undecideds almost exactly equal the margin by which Tarkanian leads Heller. In summary, Senator Heller faces a substantial primary challenge from Danny Tarkanian in a race that ultimately could determine partisan control of the U.S. Senate."


UPDATE: Bannon Goes Rogue In Alabama

Although Trump is still "officially" on record as backing Luther Strange, Steve Bannon, declared war on McConnell and Strange by publicly backing Roy Moore. Alex Isenstadt reported that "Appearing before a meeting of the secretive Conservative Action Project, Bannon made it clear that he supported Moore, a favorite among evangelicals, but was careful not to cast it as a break with the president. Rather, he said, it was an act of opposition toward Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is supporting Strange and has made the race a top political priority." It'll be interesting to see how Trump reacts.

If Ole Trumpanzee Doesn't Even Have Any Coattails In An Alabama GOP Primary...

The final count in the Republican primary in Alabama was 164,524 (38.87%) for crackpot Roy Moore and 138,971 (32.83%) for Trump and McConnell-backed establishment incumbent Luther Strange. Another crackpot, Rep. Mo Brooks took 83,287 votes (19.68%) and a scattering of 7 vanity candidates split another 30-some-odd thousand votes between them. Moore and Strange will face off in a runoff on September 26, the winner of which will then face Democrat Doug Jones, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, who won his 8-person primary with 109,105 votes (66.12%) on December 12. The only poll out for the GOP runoff shows Moore beating Strange 45-34%. As of August 18, Strange and PACs backing him spent had spent $3.4 million and Team Moore had spent $127,000. Much of Strange's money came from McConnell and Trump.

So how will Trump and McConnell handle the runoff? Trump is already trying to protect his own tarnished image by claiming Strange only did as well as he did because of the Trumpnazee seal of approval. McConnell will spend more millions of dollars.

And while Moore has plenty of detractors in-state who see him as a fringe rabble-rouser, even Strange’s allies admit the race is an uphill battle-- one where heavy attacks from Washington-based outside groups risk backfiring on their candidate in a state where voters detest being told what to do.

“Luther’s liabilities are how he got there and that the McConnell Washington crowd have been so heavy-handed in supporting him,” said one Alabama Republican strategist who supports Strange in the race.

“We’re a state full of folks who like to fight, who are defiant, we don’t like following rules, and that’s why Roy Moore is popular,” said David Azbell, a longtime Alabama GOP strategist. “A lot of folks think he can shoot off a lot of fireworks in D.C. while not doing a lot of harm.”

Alabama voters are also furious over a series of scandals that have rocked statehouse, and that taint got all over Strange with his appointment to the Senate. Strange had been the state attorney general in charge of the investigation into disgraced Gov. Robert Bentley (R)-- until Bentley appointed him to fill Sessions’ seat shortly before Bentley was forced to resign over a sex scandal.

Some saw Bentley’s support as a quid-pro-quo to get Strange out of his business. That’s a problem when paired with the association with McConnell, who has become a bogeyman on the right.

“Any time you’re the incumbent and 70 percent of people voted against you it’s hard to bounce back,” said Alabama GOP strategist Chris Brown, who ran the campaign of the fourth-place finisher, state Sen. Trip Pittman (R), and is neutral in the runoff.

Azbell, who backed Pittman in the primary, dislikes Moore enough that he’s never voted for him, skipping his line on the ballot both times Moore was the GOP nominee and working against him in past primaries. But he’s ready to break with precedent.

“I really don’t want Mitch McConnell and Robert Bentley telling me who my senator is going to be,” he said.

Moore is already looking to jiu jitsu McConnell’s backing, blasting the “silk-stockinged Washington elitists” supporting Strange.

It’s not the first time that’s worked for him: Moore won back his judicial seat by running against, and handily defeating, another Bentley appointee in 2012.

Strange’s allies argue that Moore will struggle to grow his appeal outside of his intense core of loyal followers. But the combination of an off-year primary, voters’ intense dislike of the traditional GOP establishment both in-state and in D.C. create the perfect climate for a Moore insurgency.

“Roy Moore has the intensity,” said GOP strategist Jon Coley, a Strange supporter. “Roy will turn his people out. Luther’s got to turn his people out and find a bunch more.”

The big question is how to do that.

The appointed senator will need to boost his support in a big way in the state’s more urban business communities-- especially in and around Huntsville, Brooks’ base-- and his allies worry that a deeply negative race may just turn off voters and convince them to stay home, leaving Moore with his rabid but limited base of support with the upper hand.

The strategy from the pro-McConnell Senate Leadership Fund of playing for a Strange runoff with Moore by destroying Brooks paid off. And while they’re off TV right now, they offered a glimpse of how they plan to attack Moore going forward, with ads attacking him for taking a $1 million salary from the Christian organization he runs and for flying on private airplanes with the organization’s money. A Washington Republican strategist said the group is now finalizing their strategy for the runoff.

Moore has deep support on the hard right for his repeated stands athwart the tide of social change-- in a state whose official motto is “We dare defend our rights.”

Moore has twice been forced from the state Supreme Court bench for disobeying court orders, first for installing, then refusing to remove, a monument to the Ten Commandments outside his courthouse, then just a few years ago for ordering his state to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

And Strange faces another challenge, with one of his best surrogates sidelined and another being notoriously unpredictable.

Sessions is a close ally-- Strange helped on his campaigns and followed him as state attorney general. But Sessions doesn’t plan to have any involvement in the race because of the ethical constraints of his current job.

And while President Trump’s endorsement was a huge boost for Strange in the first round, it’s unclear what he’ll do going forward.

Trump’s tweets and a late robocall backing Strange likely helped boost him to second place and kept alive his hopes of staying in Washington. But Trump hasn’t been unequivocal in his support. The president’s reaction to the runoff result was a pair of tweets congratulating both candidates-- and himself.

“What Trump does from here will be interesting to see. Luther must be holding his breath that Trump doesn’t have another post-Charlottesville and start flip-flopping on this. I’m holding my breath if I’m in his camp that this thing sticks for six weeks,” said the Alabama strategist supporting Strange.

It’s unclear how the next six weeks will shape up. But one thing’s for sure, according to Coley: “It’s going to be nasty.”

So what about the Democrat Doug Jones? A friend of mine active in local Alabama politics told me that "Jones is not the Joe Manchin of Birmingham. Doug Jones is a progressive, and I don't mean 'the most progressive candidate you can hope for from Alabama.' Doug Jones is a progressive in Alabama and he'd be a progressive in Maryland or Oregon or California or anywhere else. Jones was US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during the Clinton administration. He reopened the dormant case of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing and sent two klansman to jail for it. He was on scene at the Birmingham abortion bombing within minutes and brought the indictment against Eric Rudolph for it. Take a look at his issues page. He isn't hedging. He lists as 'priorities' strengthening public schools, paying a living wage, affordable college, affordable child care, combatting climate change, rejoining the Paris Accords, preserving access to contraception and abortion care, funding Planned Parenthood, equal pay for equal work, preserving and expanding ACA, and healthcare as a right. Doug Jones," he continued in an e-mail, "is a quality candidate who can raise money and stands for our values. I'm not being pollyannaish. This is going to be hard. We're still the underdog. But if we organize and direct overwhelming national resources, this can be done and we can take one more vote away from Mitch McConnell."

I tried confirming Jones' progressiveness personally but haven't heard back from him or his campaign yet. Jonathan Lee Krohn, writing for The Intercept, reported that "In the Deep South state of Alabama, Jones isn’t shrinking from a fight against white nationalism. 'Fifteen years ago, I actually went up against the Klan, and we won,' Jones began his victory speech Tuesday night. 'I thought we’d gotten past that, but obviously we haven’t.' All of a sudden, it matters who Doug Jones is."

So who is he? Best known for his work as U.S. attorney here in Alabama, Jones, in 1998, famously re-opened his office’s investigation of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing. Before he left office in 2001, Jones brought murder charges against two of the surviving Klansmen responsible for the attack, ultimately seeing both men convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Republicans in Washington see Jones as a major threat-- the perfect candidate to take down Moore. The question is whether there’s a state party behind him.

Once upon a time, Democrats controlled Alabama.

As a matter of fact, Democrats controlled state government in Alabama for over 100 years-- from Reconstruction until 2010-- and near the end they seldom agreed with each other on much of anything. But that didn’t seem to matter; they were in charge.

“Alabama’s Democratic Party, it was just an umbrella,” Jones told The Intercept. “You had people standing for civil rights, and at the same time you had people standing in the schoolhouse door.”

Around the turn of the century, the main dispute was between the white, socially conservative Blue Dogs from up north and the more progressive-minded, largely black representatives from the cities. The salve that kept everyone together was patronage, the party’s deep war chests, a voter turnout machine that bussed thousands of Alabamian Democrats to the polls, and the fact that they just kept on winning.

“[T]he party at the time was really just a confederation of factions that elected whoever they’re going to elect. And the only time it was really important was when a president was elected and there was patronage,” former Jones continued. “You know, U.S. attorneys and judgeships, that sort of thing.”

The bombing case was the only major civil rights case Jones worked on. Since leaving public service in 2001, while Jones has worked on the occasional corporate civil rights case, he’s primarily worked as a defense attorney for businesses and white collar criminals.

That included one particularly high-profile defendant: In 2004, Jones defended former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat, in his first trial regarding bribery charges. Legendary District Court Judge U.W. Clemon dropped the case, saying the allegations against Seigelman were unfounded, but in 2006 the Bush administration’s Department of Justice again began vigorously pursuing Siegelman, claiming he had used the governor’s office to benefit campaign donors.

Siegelman has long claimed his case was the result of a political hit ordered by Karl Rove, who had previously worked as a consultant for the Alabama GOP and was pushing for his conviction in order to help Alabama Republicans. Local politicians in both parties condemned the prosecution, but he was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Whatever Rove’s intention, inside Alabama, the fall of Don Siegelman was a major blow to the state’s Democrats, helping contribute to the party’s ultimate collapse in 2010. The GOP picked up eight Senate seats and 18 House seats in 2010, winning a supermajority in both chambers in the national tea party wave.

Once Republicans had taken over, they began doing what they do so much better than Democrats: tilting the rules so they can stay in power. In December 2010, just a month after the Republicans had won both houses of the State Legislature, Gov. Riley called a special session. Immediately, the Republicans introduced legislation making it illegal for professional associations to take money for dues out of state employees’ paychecks. This made it impossible for the Alabama Education Association (AEA) to collect membership dues from teachers’ paychecks.

The ban decimated the AEA and similar organizations that had bankrolled Democrats for decades. Suddenly, the state party was in free fall, with no money to cushion their fall.

Nancy Worley became party chair three years after the cataclysmic events of 2010. “I came into this office in 2013 and we were broke,” she said. “In fact, people were here waiting to turn off our power, that kinda thing.”

After Siegelman’s conviction, Jones continued to fight on on his client’s behalf. In 2007, Jones testified in front of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that he believed Siegelman’s conviction was “driven by politics” and not by a pursuit of the facts.

“There is no question in my mind,” Jones told the committee, according to a contemporary report in The Nation, “that the Justice Department in Washington was behind the investigation.”

While Siegelman was finally released from prison earlier this year, and has recently begun speaking around the country in support of a documentary about his trial, he has not yet appeared on the campaign trail or publicly endorsed Jones.

After his victory Tuesday night Jones said he wants to let Siegelman take care of himself and revisit with friends and family before concerning him with the rat-race of Alabama politics again.

The last candidate to come close to winning as a statewide Democrat in Alabama was a little-known circuit court judge named Bob Vance, who ran for chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012.

The man he lost to-- by a mere 2 points-- was Judge Roy Moore, the current front-runner in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate... Vance finished the race with 48.2 percent of the vote, unheard of for a Democrat in Alabama these days. But in the end, Mowrey says, the campaign couldn’t overcome the fact that many Alabamians support Moore’s bigotry, his “states rights” stance on gay marriage, and his distaste for federal interference in what he deems religious affairs.

Vance finished the race with 48.2 percent of the vote, unheard of for a Democrat in Alabama these days. But in the end, Mowrey says, the campaign couldn’t overcome the fact that many Alabamians support Moore’s bigotry, his “states rights” stance on gay marriage, and his distaste for federal interference in what he deems religious affairs.

“It’s very hard to communicate that [Moore] puts himself above the law,” he explained, “because there’s this section of the Alabama electorate who says there’s nothing wrong.”

Jones said that moderates like those Vance appealed to voters in the Birmingham suburbs of Shelby and Blount County-- which in 2016 went 72 percent and 89 percent, respectively, for Trump-- are the key to “narrowing the gap.” And while he admits he has no chance of winning most voters in these heavily white, Republican counties, he says he’ll consider his campaign a success if he can simply make inroads.

“I don’t have to win Shelby County or Blount County, I just have to narrow the gap and get people rethinking how they’re gonna vote,” Jones said, his Birmingham drawl getting stronger as he gets excited, “And when you start narrowing that gap in those counties you’re gonna start narrowing the gap on a statewide basis and people are gonna have to take you seriously and they’re gonna have to talk to ya.”

The reason Jones is so optimistic about getting his message out there is that the Republican Party of Alabama has given him a very good reason to be.

The two top contenders, Moore and Strange, are both damaged goods, and are widely reviled across the state. Moore, who says that trans women are just trying to get “special treatment” by identifying as female, has a strong base within the state’s massive evangelical population. But outside of those voters, even within the Republican Party he is seen as a liability. A staffer for a competing campaign compared him to Todd Akin, a former GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri whose odd thoughts on “legitimate rape” cost him the race.

Strange, meanwhile, was appointed to hold this Senate seat in February after Jeff Sessions became Donald Trump’s attorney general until this special election could be held. At the time of his appointment by Gov. Robert Bentley, however, Strange was the attorney general and his office was investigating Bentley for alleged use of state resources to cover up an extramarital affair he’d been having with a senior staffer.

Many Alabamians thought at the time there must have been a quid pro quo between the governor and Strange, but he took the seat anyway. Subsequently, Strange has also come under investigation for alleged campaign finance violations in both his Senate campaign and his prior AG campaigns. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, August 16, the day after the primary.

Both of these candidates would, in an ideal world, be perfect opponents for the squeaky-clean Jones. But, despite being well-liked by every Alabamian I meet, Republican and Democrat, he has one fatal flaw.

“He’s got one big issue,” Strange’s campaign manager, Michael Joffrion, points out. “He’s got a ‘D’ after his name.”

In a state Donald Trump won with 62 percent of the vote, Jones knows victory is a long-shot. On Tuesday night, Moore alone got roughly as many votes as all of the Democrats combined. But the Jones campaign is still ebullient.

“Do not let anybody ever tell you Doug Jones cannot win this special election,” said Jones’ son-in-law, who introduced him Tuesday night. “What you will find if you look at the numbers tomorrow-- this is gon’ be close-- right now in Jefferson County, this county, … right now he has as many votes in this county where you worked as Luther Strange and Roy Moore combined.” (Jefferson County is an urban, solidly Democratic county.)

While Jones won comfortably, his vote total would have only been enough to finish third in the GOP primary. To win, he’ll have to bring new voters to the polls in December, and win votes from Republicans who despise Moore-- which, fortunately for Jones, exist in healthy proportions.

Jones, the former U.S. Attorney who prosecuted two Klansmen responsible for the 1963 Birmingham Church bombing, has begun pushing the issue of Charlottesville onto his Republican opponents. Endorsed by a plethora of national Democratic figures, including Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., the Congressional Black Caucus, and former Vice President Joe Biden, Jones is attempting to appeal to the heart of a deeply conservative state with his record on civil rights.

...For Jones, though, this campaign began more as an opportunity to spread the Democratic message to the farthest reaches of Alabama than an attempt to turn Alabama blue. “We’ve got to get back into areas where we’ve been traditionally losing races and we’ve got to start narrowing the gap,” he told The Intercept. “For our campaign, our goal is to reach as many people as we can.”

But “narrowing the gap” in Alabama is a big ask.

Since 2014, Democrats have retained control in just eight of the state’s 35 Senate districts. While these districts comprise less than half the state’s population, they include a whopping 94.3 percent of Alabama’s black population and just a quarter of the state’s much large white population.

That means Doug’s gap exists somewhere among that vast majority of white Alabamians who live outside Democratic districts and voted overwhelmingly for Trump last fall. The problem is, these are the very voters Alabama Democrats have done precious little to court in recent years.

The chair of the Alabama Democratic Party, Worley, seems resigned to the party’s fate.

“You need to look at the demographics in North Alabama,” she said. “I don’t have to tell you that there’s a huge racial divide in the state of Alabama, along with the whole south. I mean, LBJ predicted that when he signed the Civil Rights legislation, you know, that he was crossing out the south.”

During the last legislative election cycle in 2014, in Worley’s second year as chair, Democrats lost seven seats in the state legislature, and didn’t even bother to field a candidate against Republican incumbents in another 58 districts.

Instead of attempting to compete, Worley’s strategy has been to stay put. Democrats now only have four legislative districts in North Alabama, for example, where they once had a majority of seats. The Democratic retreat to Birmingham and Black Belt is a microcosm of the national Democratic retrenchment on the coasts and in cities. More than a decade after former DNC Chair Howard Dean launched his 50-state strategy, the party is effectively nonexistent in many parts of the country. That makes capitalizing on an opportunity like the one Moore presents that much more difficult.

One of those remaining North Alabama Democrats is Rep. Craig Ford, the former minority leader in the state House. He has just two words for Worley and her fellow Democratic leaders who have given up on white Alabamians. “Party leadership,” he said. “I’m tellin’ ya man, I can’t tell ya enough: Party leadership is everything.”

Craig blames the leadership in the party that “made it all about race” and failed to tailor their message to a changing state. He also blames Worley, by name, for not encouraging Democrats to compete outside Birmingham and the Black Belt.

Doug agrees that the party is in shambles, though he refuses to go after Worley and the leadership. He traces things back to 2010, when the Democrats lost majorities in both houses of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction, ushering in seven years of complete Republican control.

“When folks started losing their base, their offices, people didn’t know how to respond,” he said. “They didn’t know how to be a two-party state so instead of gelling around a cohesive party theme-- not that it’s check the box, check the box, check the box, but general themes of Democratic party politics-- they tried to outmaneuver Republicans to the right and you can’t do that. And so they continued to lose races, and then you get demoralized.”

Up until this point, Democrats have “never really had a party,” Jones continued. Instead, it was a coalition of politicians in a one-party state who called themselves Democrats for political necessity.

“I think if we can get those candidates out there, we will end up with a party structure,” Jones concluded, optimistically. “The rest will kind of fall into place.”

Ford is even more optimistic. With the right party leadership and the right candidates, he thinks Alabama’s Senate seat could turn blue.

“A Democrat could win that U.S. Senate seat,” he said, though he clarifies himself with the help of a friend. “Somebody besides a Republican could win that race.”

UPDATE: Sometimes I Get Crazy Email

This one, very badly formatted by someone who is unfamiliar with how to work online, came from Roy Moore's campaign:

"Being within 10 points or less, (Strange's supporters) may pour another $3 million to $5 million into the runoff. There will be a negative onslaught on Roy Moore that he's never seen before."
-- Alabama Veteran Political Analyst Steve Flowers

Howie,

After Tuesday night's first-round victory over Mitch McConnell, all eyes nationwide are focusing in on the battle brewing for U.S. Senate in the upcoming September 26 run-off election.



And Howie, the pundits all seem to agree on one thing -- It’s going to get nasty over the next 6 weeks

Can I count on you to stand with me by chipping in a generous contribution of $1,500, $1,000, $500, $250, $100, $75, $50, $35 or $25 to my campaign’s “Conservatives United” Money Bomb to help me fight back and win?

Howie, the September 26 run-off election is THE ultimate national showdown between the Washington insiders and conservative Republicans who are sick of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and the rest of the establishment in Washington.



Unless conservatives rise up and deliver the final blow to the Washington establishment on September 26, you and I could be staring down the barrel of Mitch McConnell entrenched as Senate Majority Leader.



That means ZERO chance at REPEALING ObamaCare!



 ZERO chance at securing our border and building Trump’s wall.

ZERO chance of cracking down on illegal immigration.



ZERO chance of rebuilding our military.



And ZERO chance of restoring respect for the Constitution and the rule of law in Washington.

You and I must not allow that to happen.


That’s why I’m counting on your immediate financial support to help my campaign finish the job and DEFEAT Mitch McConnell on September 26.

You see, my establishment backed opponent begins the run-off with MILLIONS of dollars in his campaign coffers.



And that doesn’t include the tens of millions of dollars Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove plan to spend viciously attacking me and my campaign.



Friend, the situation is dire.



According to my Finance Team my campaign coffers are exhausted from yesterday’s election.

Based on current budget estimates, the first Phase of our Two-Phase Voter Contact and Outreach Victory Operation will cost roughly $150,000 to execute effectively.



And the bad news is, the deadline to fund this critical program is midnight on August 31.


So won’t you please stand with me in this all-out fight against McConnell and the establishment by chipping in the maximum amount you can afford to donate to my campaign’s "Conservatives United" Money Bomb immediately?

Of course, I understand only a few people are able to afford $2,700 ($5,400 per couple) -- the maximum legal amount under federal law.



If you are such a person, I believe this run-off election is an investment worth making. The future of the U.S. Senate -- and our country -- depends on the outcome.



But I also understand that $250 or $100 may be all many folks can give.



In fact, I know for some, $25 or $35 is a stretch.

And for others -- $10 or $15 can be a major sacrifice.


Whatever amount you can chip in to help out at this time, your contribution is greatly appreciated and will be put to immediate use to fund our Voter Contact and Outreach Victory Mobilization Program.


You and I are on the verge of defeating the establishment and taking our country back.



But Howie, Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove are ruthless.



Rumors are circulating they’re already scheming to pull the same dirty tricks on me that they pulled on Chris McDaniel in the 2014 run-off election for Senate in Mississippi.



This includes spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Democrat votes in the September REPUBLICAN run-off.



To defeat McConnell and the establishment, I must be able to count on your immediate support.

So please stand with me in this historic fight against Washington by chipping in a generous contribution to my “Conservatives United” Money Bomb.


Thank you in advance for your support!

Sincerely,

Judge Roy Moore