There is, of course, no small measure of irony in Mr. Trump’s decision to side with the establishment forces that lined up against his campaign for president. If Mr. Strange, who was appointed to fill the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, wins, Mr. Trump will deal a blow to some of the same anti-Washington forces that propelled his own rise.
But Mr. Trump has taken a liking to Mr. Strange, who, he noted at the rally, has not asked for any presidential favors, and several Senate Republicans have told him that Mr. Moore would be an unreliable ally. And should Mr. Strange prevail, the president will have established himself as the dominant force on the right, someone able to transcend the establishment-versus-Tea Party divide that has shaped Republican politics for the last eight years.
“Trump becomes the validator of what the outsider, conservative perspective is,” said Steven Law, who runs the Senate Leadership Fund, a group inspired by Senator Mitch McConnell that is pouring over $10 million into the race on behalf of Mr. Strange. “You had groups on the far right that thought they had the monopoly on that, but they’ve been supplanted by Trump.”
But should Mr. Strange lose, it would sow fresh doubts about Mr. Trump’s influence and create new headaches for party leaders. Other establishment-aligned candidates may find that the president is unable to inoculate them from populist challengers.
“If Roy Moore wins, Bannon and all the other of those people will pop out of the woodwork everywhere,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby, the veteran Alabama Republican, referring to the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who has taken a leading role against the preferred candidate of his former boss.
Mr. Bannon aims to do just that.
He argues that should Mr. Moore win, Senate Republicans from Arizona and Nevada to Tennessee and Mississippi could find themselves in great peril.
What’s more, House Republicans, who are already facing a growing number of populist challengers, could face an even bigger wave of them. And Mr. Moore’s success could prompt wealthy conservative donor families like the Mercers “to invest more” in the insurgency, said Scott Reed, the top political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
More immediately, the congressional wing of the party would be saddled with an often inflammatory Senate candidate who could invite a surge of Democratic money into Alabama and set off a host of questions about his provocative views on social issues that few Republican officials want to litigate.
Mr. Moore, 70, who rose to fame after he was removed from the bench for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the State Supreme Court, is a pre-Trump-era Christian conservative, far more focused on issues of sex and morality than race and identity.
Reading from prepared remarks at a debate on Thursday in Montgomery, Mr. Moore declared that “crime, corruption, immorality, abortion, sodomy, sexual perversions sweep our land.” And appearing at a Baptist church last month in Jasper, Mr. Moore mused about what same-sex marriage could lead to. “Maybe you can marry a horse or a cow, or five men or five women,” he said.
It is the sort of message that terrifies Republican elites, who fear he could be a more weaponized version of Todd Akin, the 2012 Missouri Senate candidate who lost after saying women’s bodies could block a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.”
“Roy Moore would be the Todd Akin of 2017 and 2018 for every Republican on the ballot,” said Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, who is aligned with the Senate Leadership Fund. “Republicans will be asked, ‘Do you agree homosexuality should be punished by death, do you believe 9/11 was a result of God’s anger?’ He’ll say outrageous things, the media will play it up, and every Republican will be asked, ‘Do you agree with that?’”
Locally, some Republicans are also uneasy about the prospect of Mr. Moore — whose lead in the polls over Mr. Strange, 64, is in the single digits — being their nominee. They worry that the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones, a former federal prosecutor, could run well among moderate voters and create a competitive race. Mr. Moore won his last re-election to the state court by just a four-point margin in 2012, a year in which Mitt Romney carried the state by 23 points.
“I think they’ll go after that seat,” Mr. Shelby said of the Democrats’ approach should Mr. Moore win on Tuesday. That is less likely if Mr. Strange captures the nomination, he said. “If Luther wins, he’s in.”
The Senate Democratic campaign arm has lined up a pollster to test Mr. Jones’s strengths and Mr. Moore’s vulnerabilities. And Alabama Democrats are openly rooting for the former judge.
“We want Roy Moore to win that primary,” said Patricia Todd, a Democratic state representative from Birmingham. “He gives us a better shot in the general election.”
Ms. Todd, who is also the state director for the Human Rights Campaign, said national gay donors should pay attention to the implications of Mr. Moore’s potential nomination. “It could really send a message across the country,” she said.
Many Republicans here believe that they will retain the seat, even if Mr. Moore is the nominee and it requires more money and attention than the national party would typically bestow on a deep-red state. At his rally on Friday, Mr. Trump said that both Mr. Strange and Mr. Moore were “good men,” and the president, seeming to hedge his bets, has said he will campaign for Mr. Moore in the general election if he wins the primary.
And to the anti-establishment wing of the party, Mr. Moore’s success would be a further vindication of Mr. Trump, no matter his allegiance of the moment to Mr. Strange. “This will be very similar to what happened last November: The people spoke,” said Mack Butler, a state representative from Mr. Moore’s home county. Mr. Butler added, “We expect Tuesday to have a victory, and the president of the United States will call Judge Moore and congratulate him, and then he’ll be on the Moore train.”
But for Republican elites, this contest has grown into something far larger than just a battle for a single Senate seat. To groups like the McConnell-backed Senate Leadership Fund, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Association, which are sending mailers and airing television ads in the closing days of the race, Alabama is their chance to halt a rebellion.
It is, after all, not just the president who is putting his prestige on the line: Mr. Bannon is making an aggressive push for Mr. Moore, turning Breitbart News into a virtual arm of the former judge’s campaign and planning to appear with the former judge on the election’s eve. If Mr. Moore falls short, it will raise questions about the potency of Mr. Bannon’s populist army — and reveal the limitations of running against the establishment and Mr. McConnell when Mr. Trump is siding with party leaders.
“It would remind Bannon who’s in charge, and I think give the president and the governing wing of the party momentum,” said Mr. Reed of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who is working with business leaders here to turn out votes for Mr. Strange. “That’s why we’re going all in to shut it down now.”
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