The Long Game: Bannon Creates Political Coalition to Smash the Establishment

Former White House strategist and current Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon has teamed up with conservative donors Robert and Rebekah Mercer to promote insurgent candidates to challenge the GOP establishment and create an organizational apparatus to advance the populist and economic nationalist policies championed by those candidates.

Kenneth P. Vogel and Jeremy W. Peters report in the New York Times:

“We’ve got a long haul in front of us,” Mr. Bannon said in an interview at the Capitol Hill townhouse that doubles as his part-time residence and as the Washington headquarters of Breitbart News, the website owned in part by the Mercers and run by Mr. Bannon.

[Bannon] and Mr. Mercer began hashing out a rough outline for a “shadow party” that would advance Mr. Trump’s 'America First' agenda — even if Mr. Trump himself strayed from it — during a five-hour meeting last month at the family’s Long Island estate a couple of days before Mr. Bannon’s resignation from the White House.

Early plans call for the creation of a sort of think tank to articulate the animating issues of the coalition, according to donors and operatives who have talked to Mr. Bannon, the Mercers or their allies. They say the coalition will ally with existing groups on specific issues and will support vetted candidates and causes.

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