Republicans still deeply divided over Roy Moore
WASHINGTON – Just days before the special election in Alabama, national Republicans remain conflicted about the Senate contest, with GOP leaders continuing to call for Roy Moore to step aside and President Trump ramping up his support for the controversial candidate.
National Republicans are at odds about how to balance their discontent the GOP nominee and their need to keep the seat in Republican hands.
“They have an inherent challenge here,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant based in Texas, noting that Trump still has a solid base of supporters in Alabama who are backing Moore. “But you also have the risk of alienating the voters you need nationally in the midterms by doing this. So they really are between a rock and a hard place.”
Trump initially supported Sen. Luther Strange, Moore’s opponent in September’s Republican primary. Moore won the bid to be the GOP nominee for the seat left vacant when Jeff Sessions left to become U. S. attorney general.
Moore will face Democrat Doug Jones in the Tuesday special election.
Trump has since endorsed Moore, despite allegations that the former state Supreme Court chief justice sexually abused several teenagers when he was in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations and refused to drop his bid.
Though the White House had said Trump didn’t have time to campaign for Moore in Alabama, the president held a rally Friday night in Pensacola, Fla., just across the border, and rev- eled in a tweet early the next morning about the “big contingent of very enthusiastic Roy Moore fans.”
“Get out and vote for Roy Moore. Do it. Do it,” he said, according to the Associated Press.
Trump also mocked one of Moore’s accusers at the rally.
The Republican National Committee, which had withdrawn its support for Moore in the wake of the allegations, reversed course Tuesday and said it had “re- engaged” in the race.
Mackowiak said he thinks Trump and the RNC are trying to protect themselves.
“Do you want to be blamed for not helping the guy that you wanted?” said Mackowiak, a former press secretary for then- Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R- Texas.
Other Republicans are staying clear of Moore. Sen. Jeff Flake, RAriz., tweeted that he had donated $ 100 to Jones’s campaign. Mitt Romney, a former GOP presidential candidate, tweeted that Moore in the Senate would be a “stain on the GOP and the nation ...”