Two articles. Please note that both are descriptive, not prescriptive. They explain, but make no attempt to advocate any particular candidate…. First, in the New York Times, I explain how and why Luther Strange lost so badly — and why Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell did too:
MOBILE, Ala. — Senator Mitch McConnell and his minions wasted some $10 million — and President Trump squandered more of his shrinking political capital — trying to tell Alabama Republicans whom to choose as their nominee for the Senate.
When their placeman, the temporary incumbent Luther Strange, lost by more than nine percentage points on Tuesday to Roy Moore, a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, their ham-handed interventions were exposed as flagrant political malpractice.
It’s a familiar pattern. When Republican Party committees or groups backed by Mitch McConnell tried to dictate choices to Republican voters in Florida in 2010, they got Marco Rubio instead; in Texas in 2012, it was Ted Cruz; in Nebraska in 2014, it was Ben Sasse. Voters in Alabama, like their predecessors, told the Washington bully-boys to stuff it. State parties can choose their own nominees, thank you very much, without orders from a Republican politburo.
Mr. Strange was never the front-runner. Smart Alabama analysts had rated Mr. Moore the likely winner from the day qualifying for this special election closed. Local considerations and reputations, not Washington’s feuds, set the parameters.
But the McConnell gang’s activities, especially their mendacious and noxious substance and character, made it more likely rather than less that Mr. Moore would emerge as the nominee….
[The full column is here, with the Trump stuff at the end.]
For Liberty Headlines, here’s more of a news-roundup kind of approach:
Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore trounced incumbent U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, and embarrassed President Donald Trump and especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in Tuesday’s special-election Republican primary runoff for the remainder of the Senate term left open by now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Moore won by 9.2 percentage points, a virtual landslide, even though Strange had been backed by $9 million from a McConnell-affiliated political action committee, plus $4 million in official campaign money of his own – plus the enthusiastic, repeated endorsements from Trump in a state Trump himself had carried handily last November. By contrast, Moore received little outside financial help, and ran his own campaign on less than $2 million….
[The rest is at this link.]