Politics

WSJ Editorial: Bannon May Be Rooting For Republicans To Lose The Senate

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

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Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon may be rooting for Republicans to lose the Senate majority, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board posited in a column on Saturday.

The editorial board, which tends to lean to the right politically, called Bannon the “partial architect” of the “mess” that Republicans are in due to Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who is accused of undressing and fondling a 14-year-old girl as a 32-year-old attorney. (RELATED: Conservatives Fear Republicans Are Squandering Their Chance To Govern)

The editors wrote that Bannon will “support any Republican candidate who promises to vote against Mr. McConnell for Senate leader, and when that’s your only political standard you end up with oddballs and misfits as candidates. Judge Moore twice lost his Alabama Supreme Court seat because he refused to enforce court orders, so his potential for self-implosion wasn’t news.”

“As for Mr. Bannon,” they concluded, “we’re beginning to suspect that he wants Republicans to lose the Senate because it’s easier to rage in opposition. He may get his wish.”

Both establishment Republicans and anti-establishment conservatives in the Senate have called on Moore to step down from the campaign.

Bannon, who is also the CEO of Breitbart News, has stood with Moore in the wake of the damaging allegations.

Bannon and Breitbart backed Moore in his primary campaign against Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, who was appointed to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions until the special election.

Moore’s campaign was a public relations nightmare for Republicans even before the damaging allegations, thanks to a number of fringe positions Moore has held in in the past, such as that homosexual acts should be illegal or that Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison should be barred from office because he is a Muslim.