Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images Opinion Roy Moore Is Pure Steve Bannon

Rich Lowry is editor of National Review and a contributing editor with Politico Magazine.

Roy Moore is the Steve Bannon project in a nutshell.

For the former Trump operative, the Alabama Senate candidate’s tattered credibility is a feature, not a bug. If Moore had well-considered political and legal views, good judgment and a sterling reputation, he’d almost by definition be part of the establishment that Bannon so loathes. Since Moore has none of those things, he’s nearly an ideal representative of the Bannon insurgency.


Events in Alabama make it clear that Bannon’s dime-store Leninism—burn everything down, including perhaps the Republican Senate majority—comes at a considerable cost. In this project, the truth doesn’t matter, ethics don’t matter, and standards don’t matter. Being anti-establishment is an escape clause from personal responsibility, and #war means proudly defending the indefensible.

Once you’ve devoted time and energy building up the career of white nationalist-fellow traveler Milo Yiannopoulos the way Bannon did at Breitbart, there is nothing that you aren’t willing to do.

It’s no accident that Bannon ended up joined at the hip to the one Republican in the state of Alabama who might be capable of losing a Senate race. Bannon went out of his way to associate himself with Moore, to make the former judge—twice jettisoned from the state’s highest court—a poster boy for his style of politics, and to call him a “righteous man.”

Even before the latest revelations, Moore was a stereotype of a witless, conspiracy-minded Southern demagogue. At best, he was Sharron Angle—the accidental Republican candidate who lost to Harry Reid in 2010—except running in what appeared to be an un-losable seat. The revelations of financial improprieties (Moore took an undisclosed salary from a nonprofit, despite his denials) and accusations of sexual misconduct in recent weeks suggest he is wholly Angle’s inferior.

There are two options in terms of Bannon’s role in Alabama.

If he’s the Svengali he portrays himself as, he’s falling down on the job. It appears Bannon didn’t do thorough oppo on his own candidate, a standard professional practice, and couldn’t prevail on Moore to get his story straight before going out and blowing an interview with Sean Hannity. The two Breitbart hatchet men whom Bannon sent to Alabama to discredit Moore’s accusers have produced nothing of consequence.

Then, there’s the option that Bannon is simply a glorified bystander in Alabama, which is consistent with the fact that Moore would have almost certainly won the primary with or without Bannon’s support.

Bannon’s reputation, of course, depends on his role as Donald Trump’s chief strategist. He was onto the Trump phenomenon early and he, along with Kellyanne Conway and David Bossie, provided a stabilizing influence on the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016.

The genius in the Trump operation, though, wasn’t Bannon; it was Trump, whose power as a communicator, gut-level political instincts and celebrity overcame his manifest failings in a race against a Democratic opponent who proved one of the worst candidates in modern presidential history.

Donald Trump was Donald Trump long before Bannon showed up, and, sure enough, he’s been Donald Trump since Bannon left the White House. The president’s reckless tweeting and the strong impulse toward protectionism, two Trump qualities loosely attributed to Bannon’s influence, have continued unabated. (Earlier this year, I thought Bannon might help anchor the White House to the right, but that gave him too much credit.)

Bannon was fired by the president because Trump got sick of hearing in the press how the operative was responsible for his success, and because what Bannon mostly did all day long was leak to reporters.

It’s a testament to Bannon’s shape-shifting that he wiggles out of his status as a proven leaker, when that is considered the supreme act of perfidy by Trump loyalists. (Bannon administered the coup de grace to himself within the White House by calling a liberal reporter out of the blue and not stipulating it was off the record.)

Ultimately, Bannon is a barnacle on the Trump brand, although one that can’t get his story straight. Sometimes he says the Trump administration is effectively over, in which case he’s implicitly saying that his erstwhile boss is gullible and ineffectual and abandoned his voters within a year of taking office.

Bannon doesn’t dare follow this thought through to its logical conclusion. Instead, he inveighs against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Bannon’s argument that a globalist cabal within the Republican Party has coalesced to thwart Trump’s agenda in Washington is contemptible nonsense. Top congressional Republicans bite their tongues every day and play along with Trump’s behavior and predications as much as possible to keep the peace—and try to pass his agenda.

Obamacare repeal and replace failed in the Senate, not because McConnell wasn’t determined to pass it, but because three Senate Republicans went their own way despite McConnell’s good-faith efforts.

If Moore were in the Senate, he’d presumably be a reliable Republican vote like any other Alabama senator. The only difference is that he hates McConnell. Is that worth the reputational risk to the party of being associated with such a compromised figure? If there is a new Republican Senate leader in the next Congress, he sure as hell isn’t going to be a bomb-thrower (Senate leaders never are). So what’s the point?

Apparently to find an unbelievably checkered collection of Senate candidates, and to put Senate seats at risk by nominating them, no matter what their electoral appeal or vulnerabilities. Steve Bannon wants as many Roy Moores as possible.