With less than two weeks to go before the special election for the U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, there have been countless articles defending Republican candidate Roy Moore over his actions of sexual misconduct with girls as young as 14 and attempting to date teenage girls when he was in his 30s.
However, a piece Thursday in The Federalist takes the cake.
In an article titled “Why Alabamians should vote for Roy Moore,” author Tully Borland argues that not only is it moral to vote for Roy Moore, it also won’t end your integrity.
How low has the Republican Party sunk that we have to justify voting for an alleged child molester? Even if his signature in Beverly Young Nelson’s yearbook was doctored, as his campaign claims, it doesn’t discredit the half dozen other women who have come forward accusing Moore of sexual harassment and assault when they were all teenagers. I mean, he did trap a 16-year-old girl in his car and tried to force her head toward his crotch, but that’s just one accuser, right?
Borland argues that voting for the “lesser of two evils” doesn’t jeopardize your faith. To quote rapper KRS-One in his 1993 song “Higher Level,” “Whether you vote for the lesser of two evils, you vote for evil/Politics and God are not equal.”
There’s never been a line in hip-hop I agree with more than the rhymes above. If that doesn’t suit you, then maybe invoking Lord Acton will help when he said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
Democratic candidate Doug Jones may be pro-choice and a bad reflection on the state of Alabama (which is one of the most conservative states in the union), but his one vote isn’t changing any abortion laws in the country. Sure, Jones could help block conservative judges, but let’s be real, the Supreme Court (as it currently exists right now) isn’t overturning Roe v. Wade and you know it.
It surprises me that Borland would go to such lengths to support a candidate of whom he writes in the very same article, “I have a 14-year-old daughter. If I caught him doing what was alleged, for starters I would kick him where it counts. Hard.”
The very next line, Borland writes, “That being said, I don’t think it’s wrong to vote for Moore.”
While I can give credit to Borland for wanting Moore to be barred from the Senate if he’s elected, the Republican Party and, by extension, the conservative movement has become a caricature of itself. We’re trading common sense and morality for tribalism and cheap political wins.
Stop with the hot takes. You’re not doing yourself any favors, and you make the rest of us look like idiots.
