MOBILE, Ala. – When last we visited the Alabama special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, it already was looking like a strange one. But with just 11 days to go before the Aug. 15 Republican primary, the campaign has turned into a nearly-Kafkaesque parade of horribles.

Much of what makes it horrible is emanating from the orbit of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose heavy-handed intervention is unwelcome among broad swaths of party activists here.