A senior member of President Donald Trump's administration told Politico that Roy Moore's loss in Tuesday's special election delivered "a big black eye" to the president.
Trump went all in on Moore the last few weeks, campaigning for the former state Supreme Court judge in the Alabama race to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions' seat in the Senate.
But it wasn't enough to defeat Democrat Doug Jones, making Trump 0-2 in his support of candidates in Alabama; the president backed interim Sen. Luther Strange against Moore in the primary.
Jones' stunning upset of Moore "is a big black eye for the president," Politico quoted a senior member of Trump's administration.
Trump tried to mitigate the damage Wednesday, tweeting that "I was right" about Moore not being able to pull out the victory.
The question for Republicans now is whether Moore's loss is a harbinger of bad things to come in next year's midterms or was Moore an outlier given that he was a lousy and highly flawed candidate.
"It's bad for the GOP writ large but due to the unique nature of Moore's problems, it's unclear if it's just bad or if we're looking at a tsunami in 2018," Mark Harris, a Republican consultant, told Politico. "Hopefully, this is a wake-up call to Republicans everywhere that we can't afford to nominate horrible candidates."
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