The Swamp Wins in Alabama

Mark Steyn is one of the two best political commentators in the English speaking world today.

Here is an excerpt of his thoughts on the swamp’s victory in the Alabama Senate race yesterday:

Roy Moore was the nominee only because the smart guys over-invested in Luther Strange (just as in 2015 they over-invested in Jeb Bush). In the first round of primary voting, Mitch McConnell’s priority was to prop up Strange by taking out what he regarded as his principal threat, Mo Brooks. Congressman Brooks would have made an excellent senator, and would have been elected in a walk, and he can also claim more plausibly than Moore to be a populist conservative aligned with the Trump agenda. But McConnell didn’t want him in the Senate and, as he saw it, once Brooks was gone, Luther Strange would have no trouble walloping Moore in the run-off.

Unfortunately, Strange owed his eminence in Alabama to the patronage of a corrupt and discredited governor. As I wrote three months ago, given the disposition of GOP primary electorates in the Age of Trump, they were unlikely to turn to “a creature from the Alabama swamp …to drain the Washington swamp“. So, thanks to McConnell and the ten million bucks he blew through, Moore won the run-off and became the candidate. And thus, of all preposterous outcomes, Alabama is now a blue state.

But don’t worry, say the usual geniuses: Doug Jones is just this season’s Scott Brown. As Massachusetts did with Elizabeth Warren, Alabama will return to the natural order of things in 2020. Well, maybe. But, as we’ve just seen, the one thing you can take to the bank is the Stupid Party’s unerring knack to out-stupid themselves. In the meantime, a Congressional majority already vulnerable to the monstrous egos of John McCain, Susan Collins et al just got shaved to a micro-sliver: Mike Pence is going to be spending a lot of time at the Senate casting the deciding vote – assuming, that is, McConnell has any legislation he can actually get to the floor.

A final thought on Moore: Yes, he’s a kook, and an insufficiently nimble one to dodge the incoming schoolgirls. But as I wrote three months ago:

Whatever one feels about Roy Moore, he’s principled enough to be willing to lose his job over the Ten Commandments and same-sex marriage. That’s unusual in American politics.

The rest of Steyn’s comments can be found here.