Why Is Bannon Bashing McConnell Over Roy Moore Instead of Taxes?
Steve Bannon
The Dec. 12 special Senate election in Alabama is being touted as the next clash in the ongoing battle between  Steve Bannon  and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the soul of the Republican Partyâwhat  Bannon   with characteristic hyperbole  calls a âseason of war.â Roy Moore  the GOP candidate  stands accused of numerous incidents of sexual misconduct  including allegations that he molested a 14-year-old girl. Thatâs prompted McConnell  a Kentucky Republican  and most of his GOP colleagues to disavow him.  Bannon   by contrast  was Mooreâs most important ally in the wake of the sex scandal  at least until President Donald Trump took to Twitter to weigh in on Mooreâs behalf.
McConnell knows that having an accused child molester in the Senate would be toxic for his partyâs image  and that Mooreâs stubborn recklessness would make his own job next to impossible. For  Bannon   one suspects  this is the whole source of Mooreâs appeal.
Bannonâs stated rationale for backing Moore is that heâll help carry out the populist revolt that the former White House chief strategist is attempting to lead against McConnell and the GOP establishment. Itâs an odd claim to make  since Moore is less of a âpopulistâ than a âtheocrat.â He was twice kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court  once for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument  the other time for refusing to grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Whatâs more   Bannon  has a more powerful weapon to deploy that really does align with  his  professed politics and would all but ruin McConnell:  He  could oppose the Republican tax plan.
 Bannon  rose to prominence by espousing a brand of Republican politics that differed sharply from what party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan were pushing. Instead of tax cuts for the wealthy and slashed entitlement spending   Bannon  thought the GOP should become a âworkersâ partyâ focused on strengthening the middle class. This idea was so popular with conservative voters that when Trump took it up  he won the Republican presidential nomination. It also helped  him  steal blue-collar voters from Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Since  his  inauguration  however  Trump has consistently deferred to the same Republican leaders whose priorities  he  exposed as being out of step with the rest of the country. Nothing illustrates this better than the tax plan McConnell and his allies are frantically trying to rush through the Senate.
In sum  the GOP tax plan makes a mockery of what  Bannon  and  his  followers claim to stand for by directing its major benefits to the kind of plutocrats who donate to McConnell and his Republican colleaguesâone reason the plan is deeply unpopular with most voters. A recent ABC News poll found that 60 percent of Americans think the plan favors the wealthy  and just one in three support it.
So far  Bannonâs populist revolt has met with only middling success. Although heâs pledged to run insurgents in 2018 against every GOP incumbent but Ted Cruz  a strong slate of candidates has yet to emerge. One place  Bannon  has succeeded  though  is in tarnishing McConnellâs image among Republicans. Polls consistently show the majority leader to be the least popular member of the Senate  and an Oct. 24 Harvard-Harris poll found that most Republicans wish  he  would resign. If McConnell canât pass a tax bill  he may have to.
Given this vulnerability   Bannon  could use his influence and platform at Breitbart News to highlight the plutocratic skew of the GOP plan and demand that its spoils be redirected to the ordinary workers who elected Trump. Calling on Republicans to swap out the estate tax repeal  carried interest breaks and cuts for millionaires for  say  a payroll tax cut aimed squarely at the middle class would put McConnell in an impossible bind  while providing  Bannon  the dual benefits of being broadly popular and entirely consistent with  his  and Trumpâs 2016 campaign message.
Instead   Bannon  has been raging at McConnell without doing much to inhibit his agenda. He may yet carry Moore to victory. But if McConnellâs tax plan becomes law  thereâll be little doubt as to who is the true victor.
The Dec. 12 special Senate election in Alabama is being touted as the next clash in the ongoing battle between   [TGT]   and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the soul of the Republican Partyâwhat  Bannon   with characteristic hyperbole  calls a âseason of war.â Roy Moore  the GOP candidate  stands accused of numerous incidents of sexual misconduct  including allegations that he molested a 14-year-old girl. Thatâs prompted McConnell  a Kentucky Republican  and most of his GOP colleagues to disavow him.  Bannon   by contrast  was Mooreâs most important ally in the wake of the sex scandal  at least until President Donald Trump took to Twitter to weigh in on Mooreâs behalf.
McConnell knows that having an accused child molester in the Senate would be toxic for his partyâs image  and that Mooreâs stubborn recklessness would make his own job next to impossible. For  Bannon   one suspects  this is the whole source of Mooreâs appeal.
Bannonâs stated rationale for backing Moore is that heâll help carry out the populist revolt that the former White House chief strategist is attempting to lead against McConnell and the GOP establishment. Itâs an odd claim to make  since Moore is less of a âpopulistâ than a âtheocrat.â He was twice kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court  once for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument  the other time for refusing to grant marriage licenses to gay couples. Whatâs more   Bannon  has a more powerful weapon to deploy that really does align with  his  professed politics and would all but ruin McConnell:  He  could oppose the Republican tax plan.
 Bannon  rose to prominence by espousing a brand of Republican politics that differed sharply from what party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan were pushing. Instead of tax cuts for the wealthy and slashed entitlement spending   Bannon  thought the GOP should become a âworkersâ partyâ focused on strengthening the middle class. This idea was so popular with conservative voters that when Trump took it up  he won the Republican presidential nomination. It also helped  him  steal blue-collar voters from Hillary Clinton in the general election.
Since  his  inauguration  however  Trump has consistently deferred to the same Republican leaders whose priorities  he  exposed as being out of step with the rest of the country. Nothing illustrates this better than the tax plan McConnell and his allies are frantically trying to rush through the Senate.
In sum  the GOP tax plan makes a mockery of what  Bannon  and  his  followers claim to stand for by directing its major benefits to the kind of plutocrats who donate to McConnell and his Republican colleaguesâone reason the plan is deeply unpopular with most voters. A recent ABC News poll found that 60 percent of Americans think the plan favors the wealthy  and just one in three support it.
So far  Bannonâs populist revolt has met with only middling success. Although heâs pledged to run insurgents in 2018 against every GOP incumbent but Ted Cruz  a strong slate of candidates has yet to emerge. One place  Bannon  has succeeded  though  is in tarnishing McConnellâs image among Republicans. Polls consistently show the majority leader to be the least popular member of the Senate  and an Oct. 24 Harvard-Harris poll found that most Republicans wish  he  would resign. If McConnell canât pass a tax bill  he may have to.
Given this vulnerability   Bannon  could use his influence and platform at Breitbart News to highlight the plutocratic skew of the GOP plan and demand that its spoils be redirected to the ordinary workers who elected Trump. Calling on Republicans to swap out the estate tax repeal  carried interest breaks and cuts for millionaires for  say  a payroll tax cut aimed squarely at the middle class would put McConnell in an impossible bind  while providing  Bannon  the dual benefits of being broadly popular and entirely consistent with  his  and Trumpâs 2016 campaign message.
Instead   Bannon  has been raging at McConnell without doing much to inhibit his agenda. He may yet carry Moore to victory. But if McConnellâs tax plan becomes law  thereâll be little doubt as to who is the true victor.