In Alabama, the Democrats played to win, the
Republicans played to lose, and both got what they wanted. The media had
declared victory no matter the outcome, hoping for a Jones win but also
salivating over the prospect of using Moore as the poster boy of the GOP for
the next year. “It was a win-win,” they kept saying. But when Jones did finally
win, that line was quickly abandoned and the rejoicing began.
Strangely,
it took a long time for MSNBC to call the race for Jones. Fox had called it
much earlier. So its gloating was tentative at first but then became a
smugfest, one that is sure to last for days. The “big losers,” its guests
intoned, were Moore, Trump, and Bannon while the winners were the Republicans
who sought to lose.
The
Moore race had occasioned an orgy of opportunism masquerading as high virtue, a
spectacle that it is only going to intensify, with the scummy GOP consultant
class, whose members routinely work for checkered candidates, pontificating
about the race in the most self-righteous terms. The insufferable Steve Schmidt
tops this list. He presents himself as the great conscience of the GOP. Never
mind that he was a consultant to serial groper Arnold Schwarzenegger, who,
unlike Moore, survived a late hit from the press (in the form of an
investigative article by the Los
Angeles Times), thanks in large part to the rescue efforts of the
very GOP establishment that pretended to be so appalled by Moore.
That
crowd never wanted Moore to win in the first place and found the abuse charges
a convenient added reason to sabotage his campaign. Under a typhoon of negative
media coverage, Moore, whose previous wins had been squeakers, needed all the
help he could get. But the stupid party was too divided and dysfunctional to
lend a hand. The Dems form a defensive circle around vulnerable candidates; the
Republicans shoot theirs.
At
first, the establishment Republicans just wanted to hand the seat to the
Democrats. So they called for Moore to withdraw. But then McConnell’s total
opposition changed to ambivalence when he deemed the race a matter for “the
people of Alabama to decide.” Yet even that ambivalence couldn’t hold. In the
crucial final days of the race, the establishment continued to signal its wish
for Moore’s defeat in ways both large and small, from Senator Shelby telling
the press that he couldn’t vote for Moore to Republicans pushing the story that
once Moore arrived the ethics committee was going to pounce on him. Perhaps if
Moore had had a Trumpian level of charisma, he could have survived the
onslaught. But he didn’t have it, and his decision to leave the state on the
weekend before the election punctuated the shakiness of his campaign.
At
the very moment he needed the party to pull him across the finish line, it was
nowhere to be found, with the exception of a few comments and tweets from
Trump. Jones wildly outspent Moore.
The
GOP establishment assumes Moore’s defeat will improve its image and standing.
But it won’t. it will only increase the disgust of the rank-and-file for a
resentful GOP ruling class that operates like a front for the Democrats. If you
are going to take Vienna, take Vienna, said Napoleon. The base is sick and
tired of a GOP establishment that never fights to win in that spirit — a
collection of Beltway colluders who would prefer a pat on the head from the
media to policy wins. Most of the establishment strategists who appear on TV
haven’t won a race in years — a fact they conspicuously avoid advertising. But
here’s one loss for which they will proudly take credit. And they will use it
to try and con their way into new positions from which they can lose again.