"God, guns, and defiance"

You want to know who Roy Moore is?   Three words define him:   God, guns, and defiance.

Moore defeated Sen. Luther Strange to be the Republican nominee to fill the U.S. senate seat for Alabama, vacated by Sen. Jeff Sessions when he became Trump's Attorney General.   The general election in December will decide between Moore and Democratic candidate Doug Jones.

Moore is a 70 year old firebrand for God and guns who not only loudly proclaims what he believes but does something about it.   A former professional kick-boxer, he has carried that same pugilistic determination into the political arena.  David Mowery, who helped run a Democratic campaign against Moore in 2012, said:  "He doesn't just say he's going to do this.   He gets thrown out of office over it.  And then he gets re-elected."

Jim Zeigler, Alabama state auditor, describes Moore as "Huey Long with religion.   Huey Long would tell it like it is.  He ran against the establishment, he would not compromise with the establishment.  Roy Moore does all those things, but he has a biblical worldview.

Indeed he does.   Moore thinks the Bible should supplant the Constitution, yet he also rails against the dangers of allowing Muslims to bring Shariah law into our country.   He doesn't want just any theocracy;  he wants a Christian theocracy.  He is anti-immigrant (an avid Obama "birther"), anti-Islam ("a false religion;"  being a Muslim should make U.S. citizens ineligible to serve in Congres, same for atheists);  anti-gay (homosexual acts should land you in jail);  but most of all he wants to put God -- his God -- back into the courthouse . . . and everywhere else.  Perhaps Moore's most outrageous and hurtful claim was that the Sandy Hook School shooting that killed 20 children was retribution for people turning away from God.  

His first notoriety came when, as a young judge, some people objected to the fact that Moore opened his court sessions with prayer -- Christian prayer.   Years later, he got elected to be Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court -- and created controversy that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court over his installing in the court building a 2.6 ton granite replica of the Ten Commandments (just like the one that Charleton Heston brought down from the mountain in "The Ten Commandments" movie.

Moore dug in his heels and was eventually removed from his elected position as Chief Justice for defying the court order to remove the monument.   One thing Alabamans like about him is that nothing makes him change.    After failing to elect him governor, they later elected him again to be the Chief Justice of their Supreme Court.   And once again Moore got kicked off the court, because he defied the U.S. Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.   He had ordered all the state officials not to obey the order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  And he claimed that SCOTUS couldn't tell Alabama what to do.

He's probably the only person in American history to get elected twice to the highest judicial position in the state -- and both times removed from that office for refusing to obey a court order to uphold the law.

So . . . that's Roy Moore.   Some people think that it's a foregone conclusion that he will be elected to the senate.   But opponents don't agree.   In fact, there is some good evidence that Doug Jones has a decent chance of beating him, not the least being a poll that shows Moore's lead over Jones is within the margin of error.  It's also likely that Jones will evoke a bigger vote turnout among black voters.

They also point out that people had other reasons for voting against Luther Strange.   He was appointed to serve as acting senator, pending this election, by Gov. Bentley.   Now Bentley was himself under impeachment investigation by none other than Attorney General Luther Strange.

So Bentley appointed him to go to Washington, and the investigation got put on hold.  No direct evidence of quid quo pro.  But it looks bad.  And a lot of voters were turned off by that, as well as the fact that Strange went to Washington and fell right in with the establishment, voting with the party 97% of the time.  And the party leaders, including the president, endorsed him.

Now, who is Doug Jones?    A Democrat and a prosecuting attorney who is known  for having prosecuted -- and won a conviction of -- the two remaining Ku Klux Klan men who had been (many years later) identified as part of the group that in 1963 set off the bomb in the Alabama church that killed four little black girls in Sunday School.

I don't know any more about him right now, but I intend to support him for two reasons.  First, we don't need another side-show in Washington.  Donald Trump more than adequately fills that slot.   Someone described Moore as "The Old Testament version of Donald Trump."

Second, this is an important vote in terms of the senate makeup.   Just look at the recent votes to repeal Obamacare.   With every single Democrat voting No, it still required three Republicans joining them to defeat the bill.    Flipping this seat to the Democrats would be one very important step closer to regaining control of the Senate.   The difference that would make in who gets confirmed as federal judges, alone, is worth every effort to win this seat.

Ralph

PS:   Sounds like Republicans may be a bit over-confident.  News shown on MSNBC last night showed some GOP members of Congress already referring to "Senator" Moore.