Sarah Palin on Roy Moore: ‘We Can Win This War!’

Tea Party leader and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin offered her congratulations to Judge Roy Moore Tuesday after news of his landslide victory in the Alabama GOP special primary election for U.S. Senate broke.

Palin, who had endorsed Moore in his populist-nationalist struggle against the establishment pick Luther Strange, took to Facebook to give her take on the landmark campaign with national implications for the future of the Republican Party.

“We can win this war!” Palin wrote. “This is what we need, the happy warriors who are in it for the right reason. They’re in it for a reason, not just a season and not just a business for them. They have a servant’s heart that we need in our government.”

She went on to expound on the significance of Moore’s victory and his qualifications to take the seat that, until recently, belonged to now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, writing:

I’ve followed Judge Moore’s career for many years, as I said, and the ups and downs and the battles that he’s had inside and outside of the party and always standing up for what he believes is right. Some of the things he’s done, I’ve just gotten a kick out of, and I think they need some of that in Washington—like when he showed up to vote riding a horse, I thought we’d probably do the same thing. He’s a good man and he’s got great character. Yes, this is what we need. We don’t need the lobbyist mentality in the Senate, because that lobbyist mentality has too often proven to the people that special interests that will enrich that lobbyist will come before the people’s interest. We can’t afford any more of that. That has led us to the $20 trillion debt that we’re in. That has led us to the government growth and overreach that we see. So, no, we don’t need to elect more of the problem—we’re not going to solve the problem by electing more of it.

Before the election, Palin had emphasized that voting for Moore did not mean a vote against President Donald Trump and “Trumpism,” despite the president’s backing of Strange. “A vote for Judge Moore isn’t a vote against the president,” she said. “It’s a vote for the people’s agenda that elected the president.”

Trump himself was quick to distance himself from Strange’s defeat, deleting his tweets made in support of the appointed incumbent, and he called Judge Moore, the overwhelming favorite to be Alabama’s next Senator, to congratulate him.