The GOP Senate Leadership Fund's Disingenuous Criticism of Steve Bannon

Tom Knighton | 12:43 PM on December 15, 2017

*Former White House strategist Steve Bannon attends a rally for U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017 in Montgomery, AL. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)*

Steve Bannon? Lots of people love the guy. Lots don’t.

The Senate Leadership Fund is definitely in the latter group. We know this because they made it pretty clear with this tweet:

The Bannon Effect. pic.twitter.com/jVc55MP5vL

— Senate Leadership Fund (@Senate_Fund) December 14, 2017

Wow. A big difference between 2014, when Jeff Sessions took every county in the state, and 2017. Clearly, Bannon blew it, right?

Well …

There’s no doubt that Roy Moore failed miserably with GOP turnout, but we must first examine how the two campaigns were very different. First of all, Sessions ran unopposed in 2014.

Yup.

Actually, I’m done investigating. We’re just going to stop right there.

Sessions took every single county in the state of Alabama, and 97.3% of the vote. Because Democrats literally didn’t put a name on the ballot. Sessions beat the hell out of “write-in.”

Know who also would have beat the hell out of “write-in”? Roy Moore.

There are plenty of reasonable criticisms to level at Bannon and the Moore campaign in general, but it’s thoroughly obnoxious to compare them to Sessions’ victory against ______. It undermines any point they were trying to make, and instead made the point that the Senate Leadership Fund has no respect for Republican voters.

The comparison possibly worth making is with Trump’s 2016 results in Alabama, which were of course much more red than Moore’s in 2017.

Although — of course — Bannon ran that campaign.

So maybe lay off Bannon here, SLF. Obviously Moore’s previously unknown character issues were the problem, not Bannon’s skill.

What the SLF did here is textbook Leftist Alinsky-ism: Present information without proper context, knowning that unsuspecting, trusting people will get the wrong idea. Media outlets do this, too — the same media outlets that Republican senators have been griping about for decades without success.

Bannon, however, no matter your opinion of him, has provably won battle after battle against those media outlets.

The Senate Leadership Fund’s record of actually getting things done? Less impressive.