Disgraced Alabama Republican Roy Moore just won’t go away.
After single-handedly losing the GOP a Senate seat in 2017 in one of the deepest-red states, the former judge and alleged sexual predator is running once again. He seems to want to take America back to the 1960s.
That’s not hyperbole, he really said we’ve got to go back to what we did in the ’60s and ’70s.
At a recent speaking engagement, Moore remarked: “We have got to go back to what we did back in the ’60s and ’70s back to a moral basis. … We did not have same-sex marriage. We did not have transgender rights. Sodomy was illegal.”
Moore’s anti-gay bigotry is out in the open. This isn’t conservatism or small government — it’s hatred. Thankfully, though, the GOP is done with Moore and the bigotry he’s selling.
About 55% of Republican-leaning adults support same-sex marriage rights. Most of those who don’t (perhaps for religious beliefs) don’t favor laws criminalizing or targeting homosexual acts. Even President Trump, far from a politically correct or liberal Republican, openly supports gay marriage and the acceptance of gay people.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has come out swinging against Moore, saying in June, “We’ll be opposing Roy Moore vigorously.” Trump, too, has denounced Moore’s resurgent campaign on Twitter.
…If Alabama does not elect a Republican to the Senate in 2020, many of the incredible gains that we have made during my Presidency may be lost, including our Pro-Life victories. Roy Moore cannot win, and the consequences will be devastating….Judges and Supreme Court Justices!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2019
Almost two-thirds of Alabama Republican primary voters see Moore unfavorably, and most pundits expect that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions will easily defeat him now that he too has entered the Senate race.
Perhaps Republicans largely no longer believe this nonsense because there’s nothing about oppressing gay and transgender people that’s in line with the conservative values of individual liberty and small government. Opposing same-sex marriage is one thing, but the idea of policing people’s private sexual lives is just authoritarian. So, too, is the idea of government discrimination against homosexuals, as a violation of equality under the law.
It’s hilariously hypocritical to hear lectures calling for government-enforced morality from Moore, of all people, seeing as he has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women who were just teenagers at the time. Perhaps Moore reminisces for the 1960s so fondly because that was a time when powerful men could more often and more easily get away with abusing girls and women.
Moore is deeply unpopular nationally, with his extremism viewed as a blight on the Republican Party. He can’t gain majority support among even the most far-right primary voters in the deepest of red states. Thankfully, Republicans and conservatives have had enough of him.
