Who’s to Blame for the Moore Fiasco?

While 99 percent of voters who wanted Democratic control of the Senate voted for Democrat Doug Jones, only 91 percent who wanted GOP control voted for Moore. Just enough Republicans who showed up to vote ended up writing in some other name on their ballots or crossing over to the liberal Democrat to hand him a victory and cut down the GOP Senate majority to 51-49. Jones won by 1.5 percentage points; write-ins accounted for 1.7 percent of the vote.

Simply as a matter of electoral politics, Republicans losing a Senate seat in Alabama is stunning. In September after the primaries, Real Clear Politics elections analyst Sean Trende said a Democratic victory in Alabama would be “on the magnitude of Massachusetts 2010,” referring to the Democratic loss of the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat just a year after Barack Obama was inaugurated—a seemingly once-in-a-generation spectacle. The national political environment was important in both elections, but Alabama 2017 was much more of a referendum on a particular candidate. Already a highly controversial and weak candidate, Moore was fatally wounded by credible accusations that in his 30s he dated and kissed teenaged girls, molested one, and assaulted another.

In the wake of the GOP defeat, recriminations are in full swing. How did Republicans wind up in this situation in the first place, with Roy Moore as their standard bearer? Some have tried to pin it all on Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House chief strategist who backed Moore till the end. Others blame it all on Mitch McConnell for meddling in the GOP primary. The truth is that while Moore himself bears the most responsibility for his loss on December 12, there’s plenty of blame to go around for his nomination.

The case some conservatives have made against McConnell is that the super-PAC tied to him, the Senate Leadership Fund, spent at least $1.5 million to defeat Alabama congressman Mo Brooks in the three-way primary and didn’t go after Roy Moore until he made it through to the runoff. McConnell wanted incumbent senator Luther Strange and reasoned that Strange stood a better chance of beating Moore in a head-to-head contest than he did of winning in a one-on-one runoff against Brooks. Brooks is something of a firebrand—a member of the House Freedom Caucus and an immigration hardliner—but he did not come anywhere close to representing the toxic threat that Roy Moore did. In the August 15 primary, Brooks came in third with 19.7 percent of the vote. Roy Moore, who finished first with 38.9 percent, and appointed senator Luther Strange, who finished second with 32.8 percent, advanced to the September runoff.

Why did McConnell’s allies go after Brooks and not Moore? According to a Senate GOP campaign strategist with ties to leadership, “based on early polling Roy Moore appeared to have a ceiling on his image, a ceiling on a head-to-head ballot [against Strange] because while he has long-time supporters, there are plenty of Republicans who were very concerned [Moore] might embarrass Alabama.”

While Moore was well-defined statewide, Mo Brooks, a congressman from northern Alabama, was not. And because Brooks had spent time on TV attacking Donald Trump as a surrogate for Ted Cruz during the 2016 GOP primaries, “we had an ability to introduce him to voters for the first time as someone who was bashing Trump,” says the GOP operative.

Many Republicans now argue correctly that Mo Brooks—or just about any other Republican with a pulse (or without one)—would’ve easily won the general election. But it’s not at all clear that Brooks would have won a runoff against Moore. If the TV ads showing Brooks criticizing Trump were so deadly in the three-way race, there’s good reason to think that same message would’ve sunk Brooks in a head-to-head match-up with Moore.

There’s something to the backlash narrative—Brooks voters broke heavily to Moore in the runoff—but the case against McConnell glosses over the fact that Republican primary voters are not mindless zombies. If voters really wanted to stick it to the establishment, they didn’t need to wait until September 26 to vote for Roy Moore (who won it by 9 points)—they could have voted for Brooks on August 15. If Trumpism were more of an ideology than a cult of personality, you’d expect an immigration hardliner like Brooks to get more than 19.7 percent of the Republican primary vote in Alabama, of all places.

The stronger case for recriminations against McConnell and Senate Republicans is that they failed to see that incumbent Luther Strange was a dead man walking from the very beginning. Strange was Alabama’s attorney general when he was appointed by Governor Robert Bentley, who was under an investigation that Strange had been overseeing. Bentley resigned a few months later amidst a campaign-finance and sex scandal that appeared certain to result in his impeachment.

While rumors of a corrupt bargain dogged Strange, Senate Republicans not only failed to push him out, they actively discouraged stronger candidates from entering the race. “McConnell is very much at fault,” says Quin Hillyer, a conservative journalist based in Mobile. Hillyer argues that a candidate like Alabama state senate leader Del Marsh could have united the party and easily won. “I know people who were the epitome of establishment Republicans,” says Hillyer, “even ones who had long been friendly with Luther Strange, who voted for Roy Moore because they were so disgusted by Luther accepting the appointment under those circumstances.”

As Kyle Whitmire wrote in the Birmingham News on May 3, two weeks before the deadline to declare one’s candidacy for the special election, Marsh had considered a campaign and even selected a national firm to run his campaign. But then that firm pulled out after being threatened with being blackballed by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

“We have made it very clear from the beginning that Sen. Luther Strange would be treated as an incumbent,” an NRSC spokeswoman told Politico at the time. “It has also been a clear policy that we will not use vendors who work against our incumbents.”

Yet even with the ethical cloud hanging over Strange, it’s hard to see how a vote for Moore on September 26 was justified by anything other than ignorance of Moore’s record. Even before the accusations that he preyed on teen girls, Moore had revealed that he had a vile character. He had argued that American Muslims, simply for being Muslims, must be denied seats in Congress—which is as flatly unconstitutional and un-American as arguing Christians or Jews may not serve in Congress if elected.

Moore has consistently argued that homosexual acts should be illegal. When asked in 2015 if he supported the death penalty for sodomy, he demurred: “Well, I don’t, you know, I don’t—I’m not here to outline any punishments for sodomy.” He clarified in September 2017 that he doesn’t back the death penalty for homosexual conduct. On August 9 of this year an interviewer made an allusion to Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech about the Soviet Union, and Moore replied that America occupied that role in the world today because of gay marriage.

All of this was a matter of public record while Steve Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist, was backing Moore to the hilt in the primary. It was all public record when, after the primary and with a few notable exceptions, almost the entire Republican party rallied behind Moore. It wasn’t until November 9, when the Washington Post reported allegations that Moore had molested a 14-year-old, that almost the entire Senate GOP abandoned him.

The most influential Republican in America, however, after initially keeping his powder dry, went all in for Moore. President Trump’s decision to back Moore meant that the Republican National Committee, having pulled out in November, began funding Moore’s campaign efforts again. According to the New York Times, Trump was lobbied by Bannon and saw “the calls for Mr. Moore to step aside as a version of the response to the now-famous ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, in which he boasted about grabbing women’s genitalia, and the flood of groping accusations against him that followed soon after.”

While the choices of Republican leaders influenced the Alabama debacle, the voters themselves of course made crucial decisions each step of the way. A better candidate could have stepped forward despite the threats of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Alabama GOP primary voters could have nominated Mo Brooks despite the opposition of a McConnell super-PAC. Alabama Republicans could have decided en masse to write in a Republican who had not been credibly accused of child molestation. Pro-life Republican Lee Busby, who honorably served as a colonel in the Marine Corps, put his name forward.

Instead, on December 12, while most Alabama Republicans decided to stick with Moore, many stayed home, and a smaller but critical number cast write-in ballots or backed Jones. Here, the people rule. And that’s ultimately why Alabama will be sending a liberal Democrat to the Senate soon.

John McCormack is a senior writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.