In March, Donald Trump left for dead the candidacy of a MAGA radical who had wondered aloud at Trump's Jan. 6 rally if attendees were willing to "fight for America" and then instructed them to start "kicking ass."
Trump pulled his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama—who had bragged about wearing body armor to the rally preceding the violent insurrection—as Brooks sagged in the polls amid his bid to win Alabama’s open Senate seat. Brooks' chief opponent and the contest's current frontrunner, Katie Britt, is a former aide to retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby, who is backing her along with the party's establishment wing, including the tacit support of GOP Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. A McConnell-aligned super PAC has pumped $2 million into the race in contributions to another super PAC that is both backing Britt’s candidacy and attacking Brooks.
The state’s GOP primary is set for Tuesday. Britt has held steady in the 30s for most of the race with Brooks and a third rival, Mike Durant, alternately spiking and falling. When Brooks cratered into the teens in March is when Trump cut ties and wished Brooks all the best in his future endeavors. Well, not really; Trump slammed Brooks for going "woke" after Brooks dared to suggest moving beyond the 2020 election. But behind the scenes, Brooks later revealed that he and Trump had bickered for months about whether the 2020 election certification could be rescinded and Biden removed from office.
More recently, however, Brooks has staged a notable comeback, the size of which depends on the survey. At the very least, recent polling suggests Brooks has surged back into contention for second place, sitting somewhere in the mid- to upper-20s. And second place would be worth something in Alabama, where if no single candidate breaks 50%, the top two will end up in a runoff on June 21.
“Slowly but surely, conservatives are figuring out I’m the only conservative in this race,” Brooks told the New York Times, calling Durant “a John McCain-type of Republican."
But Brooks saved his most scathing assessment for Britt, calling her “a Mitch McConnell-establishment, open-borders, cheap-foreign-labor, special-interest-group Republican.”
That's a lotta lotta but, frankly, McConnell was the operative part of that attack phrase. Brooks has been staging “Fire McConnell” town halls statewide to help fuel his comeback.
As co-chair of the Brooks campaign, Terry Lathan, told the Times, Brooks “is the least woke person in the state of Alabama." In other words, he's a MAGA extremist's dream come true.
In fact, a poll last week for The Alabama Daily News and Gray Television showed that part of Brooks' improving fortunes came from a 9-point uptick among voters who identified as "Trump Republicans," whereas "traditional conservative Republicans” preferred Britt and Durant over Brooks.
It's a race where Trumpism, or the MAGA movement, appears to be more fueled by establishment hatred than love for Trump.
Cue anti-establishment GOP Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both of whom were scheduled to campaign with Brooks Monday. Whoever wins that Alabama race will help decide the tenor and leader of a GOP caucus that may or may not be poised to retake the majority in November.
