In an appearance on CNN on Thursday, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) reacted to comments from former White House chief strategist and Breitbart executive chairman Steve Bannon saying that establishment Republicans were “in full collapse.”
Bannon, quoted by the Financial Times on Wednesday, pointed to Sen. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) decision not to seek re-election as proof.
“The establishment Republicans are in full collapse. They’re not even fighting back. They’re out of ideas, guts and out of money,” Mr Bannon told the Financial Times. “Flake was polling like crazy and the numbers were coming back terrible. Flake shows you one important thing. The money is getting turned off. He went down without a fight.”
According to Shelby, establishment Republicans were not in collapse.
“I don’t think we’ve collapsed at all,” Shelby said. “I think you’re going to see pretty soon in the next weeks ahead a tax cut unprecedented in this country. We’re going to continue to fight and try to deregulate a lot of the financial institutions because we need — we got $5 trillion lying around for investment in this country. We want to give people an opportunity to get this economy going again. We can do better than we’re doing, but we’re going to have to do it by hard work.”
Shelby, who revealed a day earlier he was supporting former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in a special election in December, was also asked about how he felt about Moore’s positions on some issues
“Well, Roy Moore is Roy Moore,” he said. “You know, we — I know him fairly well. He’s unique. He’s got a different agenda from a lot of us, but he hadn’t been — he hadn’t won the race yet. I believe he will in December. I support him because he’s the nominee of the party and I’m a Republican, and that’s what I’m about. But I would hope that once he comes up here that we will get behind things that matter like creating jobs, creating opportunities for people, helping children go to school and building a strong defense. If we do all this, then it will be worthwhile for him.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.