title: WHOA! Is RINO Senator Mitch McConnell Behind Roy Moore “Hit Job”?…”I strongly, strongly suspect somebody out of the McConnell camp planted the story”
text: From the Washington Examiner   Roy Moore is the embattled Republican senatorial nominee in Alabama, but two other figures in the party have even more to lose in his race: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.First, the obvious. If Moore is beaten by Democrat Doug Jones   a leaked National Republican Senatorial Committee poll has the socially conservative retired judge trailing Jones by 12 points, but this is at odds with public polling   McConnell will be knocked down to leading a 51-49 Republican Senate.That may not seem like much in a Senate that has no meaningful filibuster for executive and judicial appointments, but where 52 votes are no more useful for advancing legislation that can t be snuck through the reconciliation process. It is nevertheless significant given that the Senate has already had trouble passing major legislation like Obamacare repeal and tax reform with the majority it currently has.It also would bring the Democrats one vote closer to recapturing the Senate majority, despite a very daunting electoral map for the upper chamber in 2018. Winning such a reliably red state would aid Democratic candidate recruitment across the board and embolden the party s ten senators from states President Trump carried who are up for re-election next year.Superficially speaking, McConnell comes out a loser if Moore is defeated. But not in the bigger picture. The Dec. 12 special Senate election in Alabama could also be viewed as a front in the proxy war between McConnell and Bannon.After leaving the White House, Bannon threatened to recruit primary challengers for most of the incumbent Republican senators who are seeking re-election in 2018. At a joint press conference with Trump in the Rose Garden, McConnell didn t mince words about how he felt about this gambit. Look, you know, the goal here is to win elections in November,  McConnell said last month.  Back in 2010 and 2012, we nominated several candidates   Christine O Donnell, Sharron Angle, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock. They re not in the Senate. And the reason for that was that they were not able to appeal to a broader electorate in the general election. My goal as the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate is to keep us in the majority,  he added.  The way you do that is not complicated. You have to have nominated people who can actually win, because winners make policy and losers go home. Bannon wants more Republican senators who will vote against McConnell. McConnell and his allies believe the Breitbart News chief s intervention in the primaries could lead to fewer Republican senators overall, so they have started punching back.In September s Alabama Republican primary, McConnell went all in on appointed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange and lost, despite the president s backing. Bannon made the argument that the candidate Trump endorsed wasn t the one who would be most supportive of the Trump agenda. For that, he insisted, you needed an anti-establishment candidate like Moore. Bannon, via Moore, won.Both men might have been better off with Rep. Mo Brooks, who was eliminated in the first round of voting. Brooks was big on the Trump agenda and did not have all the weird sexual baggage that could wind up dooming Moore. Bannon allies told the Washington Examiner that the former top Trump strategist might have preferred Brooks.Yet McConnell s political apparatus spent heavily against Moore to protect Strange, a sitting senator who struggled from the local perception he secured his seat through some kind of corrupt bargain with disgraced former Gov. Robert Bentley. And Bannon couldn t very well throw his weight behind a candidate who, despite being ideologically Trumpist, endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, over Trump in the 2016 primaries   especially while still serving in the West Wing.Freed from the White House, Bannon backed Moore less because the  Ten Commandments judge  had any particular affinity for the issues that Trump ran on last year and more because Alabama s political conditions made him likely to beat Strange. Moore would owe McConnell and the establishment nothing, but Bannon would have chits to cash in and an improved reputation as a kingmaker inside the GOP.If Moore loses in a disastrous fashion (and remember it is courting disaster for this race to even be competitive; in 2014, Jeff Sessions had no Democratic challenger and won over 97 percent of the vote), it will prove McConnell s point about the futility of Bannon s enterprise before the Senate majority is ever really at risk.Breitbart   American Majority founder Ned Ryun talked about Roy Moore and the Alabama Senate race with Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon and SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday s Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live from the Restoration Weekend event.Bannon asked Ryun about celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred s involvement in the Roy Moore case, representing a woman who accuses Moore of assaulting her in 1977 when she was 16 years old.Ryan said Allred is  basically a human vulture when you look back at some of the things she s been involved in.Watch lawyer Gloria Allred, as she skirts the issue of whether or not the high school yearbook being used to prove a relationship between Judge Roy Moore and one of his accusers is a forgery:Watch forgery expert make case that Gloria Allred s client is lying about Roy Moore s signature: Remember the incident with Arnold Schwarzenegger?  Ryun asked.  She brought all these women in front of him, said they re going to sue, they re going to file suit against Schwarzenegger. Guess what? After the election, absolutely nothing happened. I think a real turning point was that press conference when they pulled out the yearbook and the signature,  he said of Allred s entry into the Moore controversy, referring to an interview with MSNBC s Katy Tur where Allred did not come off well.Ryun said this interview demonstrated that the best way to respond to sensational allegations is to  just throw facts back at them. Ryun said there was no doubt in his mind that the allegations against Moore were part of an  organized hit,  as Bannon put it. I ve been in D.C. almost 20 years. And, again, I don t have hard proof, and I will say this clearly: I do not have hard proof, but I strongly suspect it s a very short list of people, all who are associated with Mitch McConnell   whether it s Josh Holmes, whether it s Karl Rove, might even be Steven Law   I don t know, but I strongly, strongly suspect somebody out of the McConnell camp planted the story. It was planted. This came with the blessing of Mitch McConnell at some point, that he was going to take a political shot at Roy Moore,  he declared. 