Voters in Alabama elected conservative firebrand Judge Roy Moore as the Republican nominee for a US Senate seat on Tuesday, dealing a blow to Donald Trump who backed his rival...
... but a boon for Nigel Farage who took to a stage this week to trumpet the winner.
Farage said: “I have absolutely no hesitation in putting my support and my backing behind a man like judge Roy Moore who has shown in his career that he will always put principle before his own career advancement.”
But before we go all...
... on Farage, it’s worth having a look at just what those principles actually are and learning a little more about Moore himself.
An outspoken evangelical Christian who has twice lost his position as the state’s top judge, the 70-year-old won the election with a fierce anti-Washington message and a call to put religion at the centre of public life, reports Reuters.
“We have to return the knowledge of God and the Constitution of the United States to the United States Congress,” he said.
Hmm...
Here’s a round up of some of the “finer” moments from a man who “planted a granite monument to the Ten Commandments, weighing in at more than 226 kilos, inside the state supreme court building” and was fired for it.
Despite campaigning for Strange, Trump congratulated Moore for his victory and urged him to defeat Democrat Doug Jones in the December election to fill a seat that was held by Jeff Sessions before he became US Attorney General in February.
“Congratulations to Roy Moore on his Republican Primary win in Alabama. Luther Strange started way back & ran a good race. Roy, WIN in Dec!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump deleted three other Tweets, voicing his supported for Strange. In one deleted Tweet, the president said Strange “will never let you down!” and in another he said “vote today for ‘Big Luther,’” according to media reports.
Moore is favored to win the December election, as Alabama has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1992.
Moore, 70, first lost his seat on the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the courthouse and a second time for defying the US Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage.
The race exposed rifts between the Republican party’s conservative base and its moneyed establishment - and within Trump’s inner circle.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence appeared with Strange at rallies in the race’s closing days and a political group affiliated with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spent close to $9 million on his behalf.
Moore, meanwhile, drew support from Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and his secretary of housing and urban development, Ben Carson.
Bannon said Moore’s victory could embolden other grassroots challengers to try to unseat well-funded Republican incumbents in next year’s congressional elections.
“You’re going to see in state after state people that follow the model of Judge Roy Moore, that do not need to raise money from the elites,” he said at Moore’s victory party.
Strange, 64, a former state attorney general, earned a reputation as a reliable Republican vote after he was appointed to the seat in February.
But his close ties to party leaders proved to be a liability with some voters, who questioned whether former Governor Robert Bentley appointed him to Sessions’s seat in an attempt to avoid prosecution for a sex scandal. Bentley pleaded guilty to misusing campaign funds and stepped down in April.
“It was sort of a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’” said R.L Barber, 77, a Moore supporter from Birmingham.
Moore’s uncompromising style could bring a new level of turbulence to the Senate, where Republicans have struggled to reach consensus on tax and spending issues and have failed repeatedly to roll back Obamacare.
But Moore said he would back the president.
“Don’t let anybody in the press think that because he supported my opponent I do not support him and support his agenda,” he said.