The most lawless, homophobic politician in America v. a man who took on the KKK and won, twice
A choice has rarely been starker.
In one corner, we have Doug Jones. From Mother Jones‘ Pema Levy:
The cases for which Jones is most famous were his successful 2001 and 2002 prosecutions of two Ku Klux Klan members who had bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, killing four young African American girls. The crime helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act the following year. But in Alabama, where local law enforcement was often aligned with the KKK and all-white juries exonerated anti-black vigilantes, neither local nor federal prosecutors even arrested the suspects. In 1977, the state attorney general was able to convict one of the four suspected bombers. The rest went unpunished for nearly 40 years, until Jones, the US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, took up the case.
In the other corner, Roy Moore.
Here Kyle Whitmire of the Alabama Media Group tells you more than any decent person would ever want to know about Roy Moore:
The two men are facing off in special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ U.S. Senate seat on December 12.
To call Doug Jones a long shot would understate his chances of upsetting a Republican in Alabama, if Roy Moore didn’t exist. Moore is such a distracting, lawless and ultimately unreliable candidate that even Donald Trump was convinced to oppose him, which leads us to the number one reason this is the easiest choice in recent American history.
Republican leaders worry Moore can’t even be counted on to voter for the most conservative thing in the history of conservative-ing — tax breaks for the rich.
His pending election the reason why Republicans are rushing to get those tax breaks for the rich (along with tax increases for millions of middle-class Americans) passed before December 13.
There hasn’t been a federal election with a choice this easy since David Duke ended up as the only Republican in Louisiana’s U.S. Senate election in 1990. The party abandoned him.
Despite slight protestations from Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, the GOP and its president have gotten firmly behind Moore. And no Republican is saying the obvious truth here: Doug Jones is a thoroughly decent individual who will honor Alabama with his service.
You can see why conservatives had a harder time saying that about Hillary Clinton, given decades of Pavlovian-trained animus toward her and the stakes of the 2016 election. But the stakes of a Moore win are vanishingly low. You could even say the GOP would be hurt by him winning.
Republicans in the Senate have the 50 votes they need to approve any Justice or judge they want. But Moore would be divisive in the caucus and constantly drawing attention to his — much of the GOP’s — extraordinarily unpopular anti-gay stands.
You may remember Trump praised the audience at the Republican National Convention for cheering his radical call to not kill LGBT people. Moore won’t even say if he agrees with that extraordinarily low bar.
And if Moore wins, he will thrust the rest of the GOP toward its worst instincts and he’ll damage Alabama’s economy.
If Roy Moore is Alabama’s ambassador to the world and his politics become Alabama’s brand, we won’t be able to recruit the kinds of investment and business that Alabama needs to grow and prosper. It’s simple as that.
For Alabama, for the Republican Party and for America, let’s hope voters make one of the easiest choices ever.
