POLITICS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Alabama Republicans on Tuesday voted decisively to nominate Roy Moore, a former state Supreme Court judge, for a U.S. Senate seat, delivering a rebuke to President Donald Trump and the GOP establishment that supported his rival.
Mr. Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange in a runoff primary election for the seat that was held by Jeff Sessions before he became attorney general. According to the Alabama Secretary of State, Mr. Moore won 55% of the vote while Mr. Strange won 45%.
In his victory rally, Mr. Moore underscored the evangelical conservative spirit of his campaign, while invoking a Trumpian slogan…
The vote came after a bitter primary campaign that pitted Mr. Trump against many in his own political base, including former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who supported Mr. Moore.
Mr. Trump’s inability to deliver victory to Mr. Strange suggests he won’t be able to reliably harness the antiestablishment political movement that he unleashed within the GOP and rode to the White House in the 2016 campaign.
Many Republicans believed that Mr. Moore, an anti-incumbent outsider, was more in line with the spirit of the Trump 2016 campaign than Mr. Strange, who has close ties to the party hierarchy in Washington. The Moore win elevates a firebrand who, if he prevails in the general election, could make it more difficult for Mr. Trump to advance his agenda and for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to manage his slim Senate majority.”
-Janet Hook, “Roy Moore Wins Alabama’s GOP Senate Primary,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 26, 2017 11:15pm