Steve Bannon on Mitt: A crass act vs. a class act
Defense of Moore, attack on Romney sheer lunacy
I wonder how much time and effort Donald Trump’s Rasputin — aka Steve Bannon — devotes to looking like an unmade bed.
Let’s face it, there’s something way too calculated about Bannon’s three-daybender visage. It’s a prop, like Michael Jackson’s glove, or Elvis’ jumpsuits.
But then I suppose if you’re going to play the wild-eyed anarchist with the Harvard MBA, the destroyer of worlds who cashed in big with “Seinfeld,” you should look like you don’t give a rat’s you-know-what.
Judging from the response in that Alabama barn the other night, Judge Roy Moore and his redneck supporters couldn’t get enough of Bannon’s shaggy-haired guru shtick.
They ate it up, oblivious to the fact they’d become a backdrop for sucker punches Bannon decided he’d throw at Mitt Romney.
“Roy Moore in the U.S. Senate would be a stain on the GOP and the nation,” Romney tweeted. “No vote, no majority is worth losing our honor, our integrity.”
Clearly, Donald Trump and Steve Bannon think otherwise. Bannon decided he’d defend Moore by avoiding the 800-pound elephant in the barn, the echo of all those women who claim Roy sought to deflower them when they were teenagers.
Instead, Bannon slimed Romney. “You hid behind your religion,” he said, “You went to be a missionary in France while guys were dying in rice paddies in Vietnam.”
He then sank deeper into the muck by chiding Romney for not sending one of his five sons off to war in Iraq or Afghanistan.
It was vintage Bannon, tossing out chum for the barn rabble in Fairhope, Ala., while delivering a knee to the groin of a gentleman who epitomizes what used to be the class of the GOP.
That is why Bannon and Trump are petrified that Romney is eyeing a Senate seat in Utah. They don’t want class infecting their mongrel GOP.
Personally, I would forgive Mitt his 47 percent crack and crawl on hot coals to see him in the White House instead of the Captain Ahab we’ve got.
There is a sad, ridiculous irony about Steve Bannon shilling for an alleged child molester while blasting a guy who’s been happily married to the same woman for almost 50 years and drinks nothing stronger than chocolate milk.
Judge Roy Moore liked to chase teenage girls. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, once shut down his company’s office and organized a massive search party in New York to rescue the missing teenage daughter of one of his Bain Capital colleagues.
Class does matter.
“Judge Roy Moore has more honor and integrity in his pinky finger than your entire family.”
—Steve Bannon attacking former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
I have seen the future of American populism, and it’s an angry lunatic with bad hair ranting about Mormons.
Having watched his appearance at a Roy Moore event Monday night, I’m done listening to Trump fans and Breitbart readers telling me Steve Bannon is a genius. No. Steve Bannon is bat-snot crazy. And his idiotic, insulting attack on Mitt Romney and his family is part of an insane effort to transform the Stupid Party into the Crazy One.
Trust me, Republicans: Stick with stupid. It’s in your wheelhouse.
There are plenty of good reasons to criticize Mitt Romney. I know, because I enumerated them regularly on the AnyoneButMitt.com website during the 2012 GOP primary. Romney represents exactly the sort of Establishment/Squish Republicanism — timid pseudo-conservatives who never faced a fight they couldn’t run away from — that I’ve spent my life as a conservative commentator opposing.
But as a guy who’s never going to make Mitt and Ann’s Christmas card list, I can say with absolute certainty that when it comes to character, Mitt Romney makes Roy Moore look like a smarmy, lecherous buffoon.
Actually, smarmy lecherous buffoons shuffle away from Bannon’s “hero,” Moore, aka the Alabama Ass-Grabber, the Tuscaloosa Teen Toucher, the Bible-Thumping Baby-Sitter Bopper from Birmingham. Moore has no respect for the law (he got booted from his state Supreme Court post twice for all the parts of “illegal” he didn’t understand), no credibility and no character.
The same night Moore’s campaign was attacking his (alleged) victims as “liars,” one of them found a graduation card he had signed while they were dating. She was in high school. He was a 34-yearold lawyer. He says they never met.
The card says “Happy graduation Debbie. I wanted to give you this card myself … Roy.”
In other words, there is no comparison between the basic human decency of Mitt Romney and the handsy hypocrisy of Moore. Attacking a good guy like Mitt and defending a sleazeball like Moore at the same time the headlines are full of sexual harassment stories is political malpractice. Or insane. You know what else is insane? Attacking Romney for his Mormon beliefs. Oh, yeah, there’s a winning strategy: Let’s make the GOP the anti-religion party! Yes, Romney served as a Mormon missionary during Vietnam. Meanwhile Donald Trump was deferred from military service five times so he could wage the “Battle For The Super Model’s Undergarments” on the frontlines of Manhattan’s nightclub scene.
Bannon called serving as a missionary “hiding behind his religion.” I wonder how many faithful Christians who’ve done mission work or supported it would consider it “hiding” — as opposed to answering the call of their faith.
And this Bannon goes after the kids? Even if you are twisted enough to attack Mitt’s faith, how do you drag his five sons into this? Yes, it’s true, as Bannon said, that none of them have served in the military. That gives them something in common with more than 90 percent of the people in their age group. Fewer than 8 percent of all Americans have served in the military. Are 92 percent of Americans cowards? Unpatriotic?
Why would Steve Bannon go after Mitt’s sons? Is it because Roy Moore only goes after daughters? Turning the GOP into the party of Trump, Bannon and Roy Moore may feel good to the Talk-Right fringe, but as a long-term strategy for winning, it’s totally nuts.