"Decency wins," Arizona Republican Senator Jeff Flake tweeted in response to Tuesday's Democratic upset in the pivotal Alabama Senate race that gripped not just the American psyche.
Yes, decency won. But apart from Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon and Roy Moore, it is hard to identify any losers in Doug Jones's amazing victory over Mr. Moore, a candidate who was unfit for elected office long before being hit with accusations of sexual misconduct toward teenage girls.
If it is true that Mr. Moore was not accorded the presumption of innocence that might have been standard had these allegations surfaced at another time, before the Harvey Weinstein saga opened the floodgates on stories of men behaving badly, the twice-removed chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court had long proved to be such a toxic truth-bender that his denials were treated accordingly. As a judge, he answered to no higher power than himself, not even the U.S. Supreme Court. His views on gays and Muslims veered into hate speech territory.
So, yes, chalk one up for decency. And of course for Mr. Jones. The former U.S. attorney had a long history of fighting for underdogs before becoming one. He sought to complete the unfinished business of obtaining justice for the victims of a 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black girls by securing the convictions of two members of the Ku Klux Klan. He earned the respect of enough Alabamians for them to overlook his liberal views on abortion in a state that still regularly imposes stiff restrictions on the practice, usually to see them struck down in federal courts.
A shout-out also goes to Richard Shelby, the senior Senator from Alabama, who called on Republicans to write in the name of an alternative GOP candidate rather than vote for Mr. Moore. Based on the unofficial results, just enough of them did to defeat Mr. Moore. Write-in candidates got 22,819 votes – about 2,000 more votes than Mr. Jones's margin of victory.
This is also a win for Mr. Flake, one of the rare Republicans to publicly and repeatedly denounce Mr. Trump and his poisonous way of doing politics. Mr. Flake is not seeking re-election in 2018, having persuaded himself of the futility of the exercise after Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon vowed revenge for speaking out against them. Tuesday's election result in Alabama suggests Mr. Flake might want to reconsider.
The President and Mr. Bannon, the former White House strategist now back at Breitbart News, put all their weight behind Mr. Moore's candidacy after the latter had won the GOP primary. And they were wholly repudiated in one of the most reliably Republican states in the country.
Mr. Moore's defeat should be a relief for the Republican Party. It spares the party leadership in Congress of having to decide whether to allow an alleged child molester to sit among the GOP delegation in the Senate. Republican candidates outside Alabama can now campaign for the 2018 mid-term elections without being tainted by Mr. Moore, or so they can hope.
For at least as long as the Trump era lasts, however, the civil war in the Republican Party will only intensify. And that, rather than a Democratic resurgence, is what threatens to doom the GOP. Mr. Bannon aims to present anti-establishment candidates of Mr. Moore's ilk in a series of state GOP primaries that begin in March. That means the Alabama scenario could play out in other states, with pro-Trump Republicans winning the primary only to lose a typically safe GOP seat in the November, 2018, congressional election. This prospect will not deter Mr. Bannon, who seeks to make the GOP his vessel for a white nationalist wave in U.S. politics.
Should the Trump-Bannon faction prevail, Republicans could lose their majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives in 2018. Longer-term, the party risks becoming a fringe force in U.S. politics, with a shrinking voter base consisting almost exclusively of white men and women without a college education. Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon seem to believe that base is still large and angry enough to enable the President and like-minded Republicans to eke out victories next year and in 2020. Alabama suggests otherwise.
Yes, it would be hard for Republicans to nominate worse candidates than Mr. Moore. But just watch them.
Konrad Yakabuski