Bannon wants candidates to challenge ‘every Republican incumbent’ except Cruz

Stephen Bannon is looking to challenge every sitting GOP lawmaker except Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), saying “no one is safe” as he looks to challenge the Republican establishment in the 2018 midterm elections and beyond.

“There’s a coalition coming together that is going to challenge every Republican incumbent except for Ted Cruz,” Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, told host Sean Hannity on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Monday night.

The former White House chief strategist said he plans to recruit candidates who can run against lawmakers who have not faithfully fought to enact Trump’s agenda.

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“There’s a basic agenda that Trump ran on and won. He carried states Republicans haven’t carried in living memory — Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. This agenda works. The American people voted for it,” he said in part.

“By the way, [Mitch] McConnell would not be majority leader unless Trump — in North Carolina and Missouri and Wisconsin — was able to carry those senators across the finish line. It’s incumbent upon them to back President Trump’s plan, but you don’t see it,” Bannon continued.

His comments come about two weeks after an anti-establishment candidate he backed, Roy Moore, defeated incumbent Alabama Sen. Luther Strange in a GOP primary for the special election to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions. 

McConnell (Ky.) and his allies spent heavily in their attempts to defeat Moore, who made opposition to the Senate Republican leader a key part of his campaign.

Bannon, who returned to his role leading Breitbart after his stint in the White House, said his team is “spending a ton of time with the grass-roots organizations to make sure these candidates are fully vetted,” saying they will be candidates with experience who are ready to take office, unlike 2010 when the Tea Party movement was first gaining momentum. 

“They will take on incumbents in every state, and then they will take on the Democrats after that,” he remarked.

Bannon said the “globalist clique on Capitol Hill,” including McConnell and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), have to go, remarking that the establishment has “total contempt for the forgotten man and the base.” 

“What you saw Corker say today, is what they talk about on Capitol Hill. That’s why I left the White House. Remember, I said I’m going after the Republican establishment, and we are going to go after them,” Bannon said, referring to his departure from the White House in mid-August.

Although Bannon would not give the full list of names he plans to specifically target, saying that information will come out over the next several weeks, he mentioned GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah) and Roger Wicker (Miss.) are on his hit list.  

Bannon signaled that this is a long-haul fight he is planning to take on, saying sweeping congressional changes can take 15 to 20 years.