While it remains unlikely that Democrats could win the seat in a general election, a Moore victory in and of itself would spell trouble for the GOP on multiple fronts.

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First, Republicans on the ballot in 2018 and beyond will be pressed to defend not only Trump’s outrageous actions and remarks but also Moore’s. Not unlike what happened with Todd Akin, the GOP’s Senate nominee in Missouri in 2012, Democrats will have a field day tying candidates to the Alabama radical. Strange made the argument himself in a Washington Examiner interview. (“There are a lot of people that think my opponent would be a Todd Akin, an anchor around the neck of the party for the next couple years. I have to say, knowing him, that’s probably a valid concern — it really is.”)

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Moore, who defied court orders to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom and refused to recognize gay marriage after the Supreme Court’s June 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, also risks making contempt for courts into a mainstay of the GOP ideology. The presidential pardon of former Maricopa County (Ariz.) sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was found guilty of contempt of court, would be seen as opening the floodgates for radicals such as Moore and an invitation to state and national Republicans to defy the courts. The party that used to fancy itself as defender of “constitutional conservatism” is fast becoming a dogged opponent of the rule of law.

In addition, a loss for the Trump-backed candidate would serve as enormous encouragement to former Trump senior strategist and Breitbart editor Stephen K. Bannon, who backs Moore and is threatening to run other extremists against GOP incumbents. If someone as wacky as Moore (who, for example, thinks homosexuality should be illegal) can run and win against the president’s candidate, what is to stop any alt-right novice politician from successfully challenging, say, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), not to mention vulnerable Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.).

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