Arizona senator Jeff Flake issued a sharp rebuke of a Republican Senate candidate’s controversial past remarks and warned about his nomination Tuesday, while many of his GOP colleagues skirted the subject.
Judge Roy Moore has come under fire in part over a 2006 column that appeared in WorldNetDaily, in which he argued that Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison should be barred from Congress because of his Muslim faith. Wrote Moore:
Flake, who announced earlier in October that he would not run for another term, said on the Senate floor that Moore’s remarks should give lawmakers pause.
“When a judge expressed his personal belief that a practicing Muslim shouldn’t be a member of Congress because of his religious faith, it was wrong,” Flake said. “That this same judge is now my party’s nominee from the Senate from Alabama should concern us all.”
“Religious tests have no place in the United States Congress.”
Moore attended a lunch on Capitol Hill with Republican lawmakers Tuesday. On the way there, he told reporters that there should not be a religious test for public office. “That’s against the Constitution,” he said. And he scolded reporters over misrepresenting him.
“I wish y’all would print me as I am,” he said. “Not as other people say I am.”
Flake later told TWS that Moore’s controversial remarks did not come up during the GOP lunch. Moore, in turn, told reporters that he does not know Flake.
But Republicans are not the only ones confronting a religious liberty flashpoint. Republican senators have questioned whether their Democratic counterparts are objecting to a Trump judicial nominee, Amy Barrett, because of her Catholic faith. Flake raised those concerns on the floor Tuesday.
“It is up to us to question the qualifications and jurisprudence of nominees, not their religious views,” he said. “Unfortunately, that is not what is happening to Professor Barrett. I was at her confirmation hearing where she faced inappropriate questions and objections based on her religious views.”
