{"id":10891,"date":"2017-12-31T02:29:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-31T02:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=10891"},"modified":"2018-01-01T02:31:38","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T02:31:38","slug":"what-doug-joness-win-means-for-mitch-mcconnell-steve-bannon-and-the-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-doug-joness-win-means-for-mitch-mcconnell-steve-bannon-and-the-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"What Doug Jones’s win means for Mitch McConnell, Steve Bannon and the Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

David C. Barker<\/a>, American University<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing about selling your soul: The devil had better deliver. It\u2019s one thing to be damned; it\u2019s another to be a damned loser. <\/p>\n

This is the difficult lesson that the Republican National Committee<\/a> and much of the GOP are learning right now, in the wake of Roy Moore\u2019s loss on Tuesday. While there were plenty of Republicans<\/a> who refused to back Moore, there were also plenty who did<\/a>, or chose to \u201clet the voters decide.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

As someone who has studied politics as long as I have knows<\/a>, the GOP holds no monopoly on betraying principles. But this was a pretty high profile investment in it. They did so presumably not because they are down with pedophilia, but because their discomfort with Moore \u2013 or for that matter, with Trump \u2013 did not outweigh their discomfort with losing power. For the past 18 months or so, and perhaps most conspicuously in the past couple of weeks, most Republicans seem to have calculated that their best path to maintaining power was to jump in bed with Steve Bannon and the so-called Trump base (maybe with the lights off, but still). And now here they are.<\/p>\n

Sure, only one seat changed hands. But that one seat makes a big difference when you are clinging to such a precarious Senate majority<\/a>. One place where that difference is being felt immediately is on the tax bill. Any hope that the GOP would carefully work out the bill\u2019s considerable kinks in a conference committee<\/a> is now lost. Republicans know they have to get this thing done now<\/a>, before Jones is seated in January. The Senate bill only passed with 51 votes<\/a>. Come 2018, all it would take is for John McCain to rediscover his thumb<\/a> or for Rand Paul to get beaten up<\/a> again (which is never out of the question), and the signature achievement of this GOP team would wind up falling short of final passage. And as I wrote<\/a> a couple of weeks ago, if Republicans can\u2019t cut taxes when they enjoy unified power, why do they get up in the morning?<\/p>\n

Conservatives should finish their business on the tax bill now \u2013 because getting anything else on their wish list just became considerably more daunting. Entitlement reform<\/a>? Please. Swing vote Republican lawmakers like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski just became more powerful, and they aren\u2019t going to put up with significant cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or SNAP.<\/p>\n

Just as the moderates in the party are seeing their stock rise, the insurgents are surely seeing theirs fall. In case there was any doubt following the special elections in Virginia<\/a> and New Jersey<\/a> last month, this Alabama outcome pretty well explodes the myth that candidates should cultivate Steve Bannon\u2019s blessing. Meghan McCain,<\/a> John McCain\u2019s daughter and a Republican, pithily summed up the new conventional wisdom, tweeing \u201cSuck it, Bannon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n <\/a>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n