It's all happening. After fanning the flames of ignorance for decades to win at the ballot box, the Republican establishment now has an ungovernable base led by an unrepentant incompetent whose only goal is to benefit himself, even if it means debasing the party.
If Roy Moore's win over Mitch McConnell's pick for the Alabama senate, Luther Strange, proved anything, it's that the insurrection is far bigger than Donald Trump, who originally backed Strange then spent Tuesday night erasing the tweets proving he had picked a loser. Nothing upon nothing screams loser louder than that. The Washington Post’s Robert Costa writes:
It marked yet another humiliation for the Washington-based Republican establishment, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose allies pumped millions of dollars into the race to prop up Strange and reassure his colleagues that they could survive the Trump era.
Moore’s win, however, also demonstrates the real political limitations of Trump, who endorsed “Big Luther” at McConnell’s urging and staged a rally for Strange in Huntsville, Ala., just days before the primary. The outcome is likely to further fray Trump’s ties to Republicans in Congress, many of whom now fear that even his endorsement cannot protect them from voter fury.
Establishment Republicans have already begun running for the exits, with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker joining on Tuesday what could amount to a stampede before this is all over. To date, Republicans have no major legislative wins to speak of, infuriating both the GOP donor class that funds their candidacies and a base that already despises Washington. The prospect of more retirements and bitter GOP primary challenges from the right is putting a Senate map that once seemed totally impossible potentially in reach for Democrats in the longest of long shots type of way. They need to pick up three seats along with defending the seats of 25 incumbents. But Democrats will now be competing for an open seat in Tennessee, for instance, and some Democrats think Moore’s win could make Alabama competitive for them for the first time since the 1990s.
“It’s an acid flashback to 2010,” said Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk-radio host, referring to the year when seasoned GOP figures lost Senate primaries across the country as incendiary conservatives charged forward.
“It’s almost as if there is a compulsion in the party to nominate the most ‘out there’ candidate just to show you can, with no concern about what that means for the rest of the party,” Sykes said. “Republicans — and that means Trump, too — have unleashed something they can’t control.” [...]
With Corker retiring, seven Senate Republicans are expected to run for reelection next year: Wicker, Heller, Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and John Barrasso (Wyo.).
For months, only three of them — Flake, Heller and Wicker — were widely seen as vulnerable to primary upsets. But in the wake of Alabama, GOP operatives are no longer ruling out an expanded map of targets for [Steve] Bannon and his associates, such as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who stormed behind Moore’s candidacy to reassert her influence within the party.
During an election eve rally Monday night, Bannon hurled the terms "morons" and "rubes" at the likes of establishment Republicans like McConnell and Karl Rove.
None of this infighting is going to make it easier to pass legislation. It simply makes lawmakers more aware that they have a target on their backs for any given vote they take—as if politicians didn't already obsess over that. But Tuesday proved the Republican Party with all its money and connections couldn't protect its own, so now it's every person for themselves in the GOP. That's a legislative disaster for a party that's solely in control of Congress.