GOP Finger-Pointing Starts Right After Moore Defeat in Alabama

(Bloomberg) -- The Republican finger-pointing started minutes after GOP candidate Roy Moore lost to a Democrat in deep-red Alabama’s Senate race, with nervous party members fearing more of the same in the 2018 election might take away their majorities in Congress.

“Congratulations to the Bannon wing of the @GOP for gifting a seat to @SenateDems in one of the reddest states,” Republican Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida wrote on Twitter Wednesday, referring to Moore backer Steve Bannon, the anti-establishment ally of President Donald Trump. “You have no future in our country’s politics.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who opposed Moore, was blamed by an adviser to the pro-Trump Great American Alliance. “Mitch McConnell and the Republican establishment got their wish: they successfully delivered Alabama to a liberal Democrat,” said adviser Andy Surabian.

And Trump himself said he knew all along that the controversial Moore couldn’t win. The president bet incorrectly twice in Alabama -- first backing Luther Strange, who lost to Moore in the primary, then giving a full-throated endorsement to Moore before his loss Tuesday to Democrat Doug Jones.

“The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election,” Trump said on Twitter Wednesday morning. “I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!”

Hours later, the president told reporters at the White House, “As the leader of the party, I would have liked to have had the seat,” though he added that other Republicans are “very happy with the way it turned out.” He said he doesn’t think the Democratic victory will affect his agenda.

51-49 Margin

Almost nothing scares Republicans more than losing a seat in solidly GOP territory, especially when it drops their Senate majority to 51-49. With the full House and one-third of the Senate on the ballot next year, the party can’t afford to be in disarray.

Most of the initial criticism was aimed at Bannon, the former chief strategist for Trump who says he plans to run insurgent candidates against almost all Senate Republicans in primaries next year with the goal of topping the GOP establishment -- and McConnell in particular. Thus far, Republicans in Congress haven’t sought to blame Trump himself.

Bannon, by backing Moore, "cost us a critical Senate seat in one of the most Republican states in the country," said Steven Law, leader of a political action committee aligned with McConnell.

The majority leader hasn’t yet commented publicly on the Alabama election result, though he has repeatedly asserted that Republicans lose when they nominate flawed candidates like those who lost to Democrats in previous years in Delaware, Indiana and Missouri. Moore has yet to concede the race.

‘Disheveled Drunk’

Republican Representative Peter King of New York accused Bannon of demeaning the government and the political process. “This guy does not belong on the national stage" and looks like a "disheveled drunk," King said in an interview with CNN Wednesday. Although Bannon goes out of his way to put on an "everyman" image, he is in fact a "Goldman Sachs millionaire," King said.

Former White House aide Anthony Scaramucci -- who, like Bannon, was fired by Trump -- called the Alabama election a "short-term setback" for the president, in an interview Wednesday on Bloomberg Television. He said people shouldn’t underestimate Bannon, adding, "That’s one battle. There’s a bigger war."

GOP Representative Brad Byrne of Alabama wasn’t blaming anyone, though. "This was all about Alabama," he said on MSNBC Wednesday. "It didn’t have anything to do what was going on in Washington or the national news media."

"You want to hear that this is somehow a harbinger for 2018," Byrne said. "In the state of Alabama, it just isn’t.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Laurie Asséo in Washington at lasseo1@bloomberg.net, Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum

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