Judge Roy Moore, the conservative candidate in the U.S. Senate GOP primary runoff in Alabama, continues to maintain his commanding lead over the establishment-backed Luther Strange, with a new poll showing the race to be Moore’s to lose.
The poll showing Moore with another double digit lead comes as President Donald Trump announced late Saturday he plans to campaign for Strange next weekend, the final Saturday before the all-important runoff election on Sept. 26.
Moore, at 50 percent in the new poll, leads Strange who struggles back at 37 percent. There are 13 percent undecided, and Moore’s 13-point lead is well outside the survey’s 3.7 percent margin of error.
The survey, conducted Sept. 9 to Sept. 12, polled 700 likely voters and was conducted for pro-Moore PAC, A Time For Choosing—and provided to Breitbart News exclusively.
“Mitch McConnell’s gang can put out all the fake news polls they want, but every single independent pollster has shown Roy Moore with at least a ten point lead,” a strategist with A Time For Choosing told Breitbart News. “It’s not a surprise either: they have to justify to their donors why they’re spending millions attacking Roy Moore. They can’t go back and ask for more if they admit the truth: Luther Strange is down double digits.”
Trump’s favorability in the survey is still very high, as 83 percent consider him either somewhat or very favorable and just 15 percent consider him either somewhat or very unfavorable. But his endorsement does not help Strange much.
The poll shows that most people are aware of the fact that Trump has endorsed Strange, and they don’t care and won’t vote for Strange anyway. Eighty-three percent of respondents were aware that Trump backed Strange, but Moore still has the lead 50 percent to 37 percent.
This race between Moore and Strange has quickly become a flashpoint in a larger war inside the GOP for the heart and soul of the party. A vote for Strange is a vote against President Trump’s agenda, the agenda he successfully campaigned on last year defeating 16 fellow Republicans to win the GOP nomination and beating Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election. A vote for Moore, with Strange’s Trump endorsement, is a vote for that Trump agenda—and against the cult of personality surrounding President Trump. If Alabamians send Moore to the U.S. Senate, they will be sending a message to the swamp in Washington D.C., that they do not support Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others’ efforts to dilute the agenda that President Trump campaigned on.
A PAC affiliated with McConnell, Senate Leadership Fund, has been spending millions upon millions of dollars backing Strange in the first round of voting before the Aug. 15 primary and in the second round of voting. The group’s advertisements are largely demonstrably untrue and false advertising, but they keep spending the money anyway. In fact, Senate Leadership Fund was caught deceptively editing a video of Moore to suggest he does not support President Trump’s border wall when he in fact does support the border wall.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a candidate who secured just under 20 percent in the primary’s first round, endorsed Moore on Saturday.
“Which senate candidate’s campaign has been honorable and honest?” Brooks shouted to the crowd in Huntsville at the Moore rally at which he endorsed the frontrunner. The crowded room shouted back: “Roy Moore!”
“Which senate candidate has proven he has the backbone to stand up to Washington’s special interests and put America first?” Brooks asked again. “Roy Moore!” the crowd yelled back.
Brooks continued hammering points like this home before shifting his attention to the misleading attack ads that are demonstrably false that Senate Leadership Fund has been running against Moore on Strange’s behalf.
Brooks said:
The Strange-McConnell forces care not one twit about honor or truth. They have freely used malicious lies to wage a nonstop scorched earth campaign of personal destruction. To be clear, the Strange-McConnell campaign tactics betray all Republicans, all Alabamians, and America while helping Democrats win this seat. That is the only thing their attack ads are doing, weakening our nominee. With a vote for Roy Moore, we reject those tactics not only here in this race but in every other race in the future for the United States Congress, the presidency of the United States, and the United States Senate. The Strange-McConnell forces maliciously and personally attacked and maligned me. Now they’re doing the same to Roy Moore.
Brooks pointed to two separate examples of where the Strange and McConnell allies have been caught deceptively attacking Republicans in Alabama’s Senate race—one about him and one about Moore, saying:
One attack ad is personal to me because it was an attack on me. But I use it as an example. It maliciously and falsely asserted that I support the barbaric Islamic State. The ad scrolls across the screen four floor votes, none of which related to the Islamic State. All four votes sought to restrain Barack Obama, not Donald Trump—Barack Obama—from engaging in acts of war against a sovereign nation without the congressional approval required by Article I of the Constitution. The ad was rubbish, but the Strange-McConnell forces launched it anyway because they thought they could get away with it because they knew I lacked the financial resources to hold them accountable and they believe Judge Roy Moore is in the same circumstance. So as a consequence I focus on this second ad of the Strange-McConnell forces.
The second deceptive advertisement that Brooks pointed to that McConnell’s forces have run in Alabama that Strange approves of was one accusing Moore of not supporting the president’s planned wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. Breitbart News has already caught the deceptive editing of videos that McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund cronies used to make this attack, where they pulled videos from two separate events and spliced them together out of context to make it appear as though Moore said something he did not.
“It maliciously and falsely maligns Roy Moore and falsely claims that Roy Moore opposes a border wall,” Brooks said. “Yet, in the very same speech the ad distorts Roy Moore stated ‘I would, yes, support a wall being built.’”
The crowd at the Moore-Brooks event cheered.
Combined in the first round of voting, Moore, Brooks, and fellow Moore-endorser state Sen. Trip Pittman—another candidate who got around 8 percent—the three candidates got 65.5 percent of the vote. That was with Trump’s endorsement of Strange last go-around, and with the millions upon millions of dollars of false attack ads against Brooks and Moore. Now that most of the Republican Party of Alabama has aligned behind Moore, as Strange continues to fail to gain any real traction in new polling even with Trump’s continued endorsement and the president’s planned rally in Huntsville for Strange on Saturday night, Strange still appears to be heading to a loss.
Most of the Washington establishment that despises Trump’s agenda—including the Chamber of Commerce, the NRA, McConnell’s forces, and Karl Rove and his allies—have aligned behind Strange. Most of the supporters of the president’s agenda—including Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, former White House chief strategist and Breitbart News executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin—have aligned behind Moore’s campaign. Palin is expected to campaign in Alabama for Moore this coming week.
It sets up a battle on Sept. 26 inside the GOP where for the first time voters will get to decide if they want the agenda that President Trump campaigned on, or if they just want Trump’s personality without the agenda. Voting for Strange is voting against the president’s agenda from the 2016 campaign trail, whereas voting for Moore is voting to uphold everything Trump campaigned on against Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Now that this latest poll shows Moore maintaining his commanding double-digit lead—one that comes on the heels of recent similar polls that also show Moore with double-digit leads—it remains to be seen if even a Trump rally can save failing Luther Strange. While this poll was done for a pro-Moore organization, its numbers and the spread match what independent pollsters from Boston’s Emerson College Polling Society, the Louisiana-based JMC Analytics, and Opinion Savvy have shown.
Of course, if Trump’s endorsement and campaign rally does not win it for Strange, it will be an embarrassment to the president as the movement that first sent him to the White House signals it would like to rein him back in to the agenda he campaigned on rather than the direction many of the Democrats who populate the West Wing and congressional leadership would like him to go.
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