The detailed report that Roy Moore pursued and molested teenage girls as an assistant district attorney in his early 30s has poured fuel on the fire of Republican civil war. Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are not pleased with former top Trump aide and Breitbart News head Steve Bannon for putting the Republican Party in this position:
“This is what happens when you let reckless, incompetent idiots like Steve Bannon go out and recruit candidates who have absolutely no business running for the U.S. Senate,” said Josh Holmes, a former McConnell aide. [...]
Steven Law, the head of a McConnell-aligned “super PAC” that led an onslaught against Mr. Moore in the Republican runoff, did not wait for a guilty verdict before he excoriated Breitbart for “defending ‘consensual’ sex between a 32-year-old and a 16-year-old.”
Bannon didn’t comment on this particular issue to the New York Times, but since he’s been consistently assailing McConnell and calling for him to be ousted as Senate majority leader, it’s not hard to imagine what his position is here.
McConnell himself remains the good Republican with his eye on keeping Alabama’s Senate seat Republican even if it means Roy Moore. He issued the standard “if these allegations are true, he must step aside” statement after the story broke, with that “if true” providing an awful lot of wiggle room to decide oh, hey, it’s fine for Moore to keep running because it’s only his word against the word of FOUR WOMEN and we know that one man’s word is worth more than that of at least half a dozen women.
But this is sure not making Republicans any happier with one another.