Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner of Yuma had to be one of the happiest Republicans in Washington over the results of the Roy Moore-Doug Jones race in Alabama Tuesday night. Gardner is in charge of building on the GOP’s narrow lead in the chamber next year and beyond as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

And the Democrat won. Moore, the Republican nominee dogged by sexual misconduct allegations involving teenaged girls when he was a local prosecutor in the 1970s, had the potential to dog the party in the #MeToo era going into the next year’s mid-terms, however.

Jones became the first Democratic U.S. senator from Alabama since 1992, when current Sen. Richard Shelby was elected, before he switched to the GOP in 1994. Shelby said last weekend that he, like Gardner, would not support Moore.

Even though Republicans lost a seat in the special election to replace Jeff Sessions, appointed by Trump to be U.S. attorney general, they stood to lose more, no pun intended, if Democrats and women voters were energized by a Moore win and swelled the usual surge by the party not occupying the White House in the first mid-term after an election. Losing Moore was like losing a toe to save a foot.

President Trump and the Republican National Committee joined or returned to Moore’s side in the latter days of the campaign, but the National Republican Senatorial Committee never did.

“Tonight’s results are clear – the people of Alabama deemed Roy Moore unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate,” Gardner said in a statement. “I hope Sen.-elect Doug Jones will do the right thing and truly represent Alabama by choosing to vote with the Senate Republican majority.”

Ian Silverii, the leader of the liberal ProgressNow Colorado advocacy organization, shot back at Gardner on Twitter.

“This is quite possibly the most tone deaf thing a politician has ever said,” Silverii tweeted. “Neither you nor the @GOP are entitled to any seat, any state, anywhere.”

The Denver Post reported last week that Gardner had not taken any preliminary steps to organize a vote or other steps to get rid of Moore, if he were to be elected, but the day before on Jimmy Sengenberger’s “Business for Breakfast” show on Denver’s Money Talk 1690, Gardner was clear that his dim view of Moore had not changed.

Eric Sondermann, the well-respected independent political analyst in Denver, sized up the race of Facebook, with a nod to Gardner:

To Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, RNC, et al-

If you’re going to go all-in with utter, inexcusable sleaze in as deep red of a state as our country has to offer, then you’d better at least win.

Instead, you’re left with no Senate seat and no momentum. Just shame.

PS- In their elation, fair-minded Colorado Democrats might offer at least a tepid hat-tip to Sen. Cory Gardner who stood apart from all those listed above and refused to dance with Roy Moore.

PPS- If the Bannon embrace won’t fly in Alabama, perhaps it’s time to question its value in purple or light-blue Colorado. That might be worth pondering, Tom Tancredo.

State Rep. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, saw momentum on the horizon for Democrats headed into the mid-term from the narrow win against a heavily flawed Republican in Alabama.

“It won’t end,” Herod tweeted. “The #dems are coming and we will not back down until we have a government that puts its people first.”