Story highlights If he wins, the Senate GOP will immediately be forced to reckon -- again -- with Moore's alleged behavior

A number of high-profile Republicans have been open with their worries.

(CNN) The Alabama Senate race will come to an end on Tuesday night, but the passions animating this brutal campaign promise to inflame the national political scene for much longer -- a reality some Democrats quietly acknowledge, win or lose, could aid their efforts to slow the Republican agenda in Washington and hobble GOP candidates ahead of next year's midterms.

A win for Democrat Doug Jones this week would have the immediate effect of further pressurizing the Republican push to get a tax bill to President Donald Trump's desk. The GOP's slim majority would be further narrowed, to 51-49, by a victorious Jones, leaving the party only a single vote to spare in passing legislation under reconciliation rules. The result would also effectively dash any lingering Republican hopes of gaining a 60-seat supermajority in 2019.

Should Moore prevail, the status quo on taxes would too, but Republicans will be thrown, deeper still, into a much more complicated and potentially damaging debate over the nature of their relationship with a man accused of molestation, sexual assault and trying to date teenage women decades ago in Alabama.

In their search for high ground on the issue of sexual harassment and misconduct, Senate Democrats forced one of their own, Sen. Al Franken, into political exile, asking for and receiving his announced resignation. Franken's ouster solidified the Democratic Party line and, in doing so, established a contrast with the Republican handling of Moore.

If he wins, the Senate GOP will immediately be forced to reckon -- again -- with Moore's alleged behavior, first in an anticipated ethics committee investigation, and then, possibly, a blockbuster vote to expel their new colleague from the chamber. Meanwhile, Republican candidates across the country, up and down the ballot, will be pressed by Democrats to plainly state their position on Moore, a lose-lose proposition in these tribal times.