McConnell dances on Bannon's grave
But with nasty Republican primaries on the horizon, the Senate majority leader is hardly in the clear.
By KEVIN ROBILLARD and ELIANA JOHNSON 01/06/2018 06:59 AM EST
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies rang in the new year with a week-long celebration of Steve Bannon's self-immolation. But the festivities may prove to be short-lived.
The Republican leader still has a slate of brutal GOP primaries looming in the first half of this year that could jeopardize his party's hold on the Senate — even with Bannon out of the picture, assuming that his breakup with President Donald Trump and the wealthy Mercer family lasts.
Still, McConnell’s team believes — probably with good reason — that their job in 2018 is now significantly easier without Bannon to marshal insurgent forces against incumbent Republican senators and cost the party crucial Senate seats. That's precisely what they blame him for doing in Alabama, where the party nominated Bannon-backed Roy Moore only to watch him blow a seemingly can't-lose race.
“Taking that counter-argument out of the game here clears the path for a very clear-eyed political strategy for the year,” said Scott Jennings, a Republican political strategist and former McConnell aide. “Bannon would have dramatically complicated that.”
Jennings and other McConnell allies say the party can focus on selling a still-unpopular tax law to the American public and picking up Senate seats in states President Donald Trump won in 2016. To the extent Bannon is blasting McConnell and his cohorts as corporate globalist sellouts, he'll be doing so as a much-diminished political force.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/06/mitch-mcconnell-steve-bannon-gop-primaries-327112
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