Bannon Gets Buyer's Remorse

Steve Bannon couldn't get enough of Alabama Republican Roy Moore. Trump endorsed Moore's opponent, Luther Strange, for the Republican senate nomination but Bannon went for Moore. When the Moore scandal broke, the besotted Fenian attacked the Amazon/Bezos/Washington Post conspiracy to take down the Tea Party favourite, his boy Roy.

I pretty much knew all that anyone should need to know about Moore when I read that, as an army captain in Viet Nam, Moore had crafted himself a bed built of sandbags so his soldiers couldn't frag him while he slept. Then it turned out Moore wasn't leading his men up Hamburger Hill or the Ia Drang valley. They were a unit of MPs guarding Vietnamese prisoners or war who might or might not have been fighting for the north. They were REMFs, "rear echelon mother f#@kers" who must have had thoughts about offing Roy but not because he was going to lead them into insane risks in combat. Roy must've figured they wanted him to eat a frag grenade because he deserved to die - and Roy knew it.

Now all those women, five to date, have come out to accuse Repug Roy, of messing with underage kids. No, not exactly fuckin'em but giving them the Louis C.K. once-over. Molesting them a bit, no penetration.

Sean Hannity has rallied to Moore's side and his show's advertisers have drawn a line and decided to beat feet, following advertisers from previous fiascos.

And now, the curiously florid Steve Bannon, is getting cold feet. He's even seemingly contemplating where he'll bury the remains.



Bannon said late last week that "I will put him in a grave myself" if he finds that Moore lied to him about the accusations leveled against him in a Washington Post article. There's been no public reaction by Bannon to a press conference Monday held by a fifth woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 16 years old.

Initially, Bannon referred to the Washington Post's report as an orchestrated political attack. "The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore," he declared in a speech in Manchester last week after the story broke. He has also railed at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell over Moore, calling it a "desperate attempt" for him to hold onto power.

Bannon has seen Moore as the means to challenge establishment Republicans, throwing his support behind Moore during the primary against President Trump's and Senate Republicans' preferred candidate, incumbent Sen. Luther Strange. Moore beat Strange handily in the recent primary election.

CBS News has confirmed that Bannon has told those close to him that he's not comfortable with the sexual harassment accusations, though he also suspects the story might be part of a GOP establishment hit job to sink Moore's candidacy. But his friends have advised him that it's unlikely that all the accusations are without merit, and they think he should distance himself from Moore soon.

I'm left wondering if Roy Moore isn't being seen by moderate Republicans (who are already rightwing extremists) as an opportunity to purge the GOP of the very ultra right extremists they invited into the party when they imagined they could control them. It ain't a civil war until the other party strikes back.

There's blood in the water and the Big Sharks are circling like buzzards.