Roy Moore for Alabama Governor

Now, that's not quite fair. I have to deal with his constituency on a daily basis at work, and I speak from experience: when it rains, their phones don't work because the string connecting the tin cans gets stretchy. (Dead seriously, I work for a large phone center, and I regularly get Alabama customers who are asked for a contact phone number who scream "I ain't got no 'contact telephone'!" as if it's some special brand of phone. I just want to tell them "Okay, then just give us the phone number for your meth dealer, just in case we need to reach you...")

And to add to the snark, there's the old joke about why the film Deliverance was shot in Georgia instead of Alabama. The extras would have been exactly the same, but the filmmakers knew that they could have access to electricity in Georgia...

As someone who doesn't live in Alabama, it's kind of disappointing he's not going to win, just from the entertainment angle. However, I'm relieved for the people who have to live there (even those who support him!).

I liked to listen to Neil Boortz in the mornings (streaming online out of Atlanta), and I keep hearing commercials for Alabama beaches. Or is that Mississippi? Pretty sure it's Alabama. Either way, they make me laugh.

I'm surprised, I thought Moore would be a shoe-in. I used to get annoyed whenever I heard his name. But as soon as I read the post title I started laughing. Wadda maroon.

"He seems to have strong grass-roots support that doesn't poll strongly," he said.

This may not be as stupid as it sounds. In Poland, populist parties are often under-represented in the polls. People, it seems, are ashamed to tell the pollster who they are voting for.

Phone polls are not known for their accuracy, BTW -- for the reason people MAY have a phone but ALWAYS can vote.

I just heard a radio interview with Loretta Nall, the Libertarian party candidate for governor (if she can get enough signatures). Between her, Moore, and Don Siegelman, we have a theocrat who was removed from office for defying a direct order from a federal judge (Moore), a guy who was indicted for bid-rigging (Siegelman), and a woman who was convicted for marijuana possession (Nall). Now, which one would you vote for?

I thought that Moore would be a shoo-in, too, particularly because of the defeat of the Riley-supported tax reform measure a few years ago.

Alabama politics has always been "interesting," that's for sure. When Gov George Wallace couldn't run again due to a one term state constitutional limit, he had his wife nominated and elected instead.

There's a Lurleen B. Wallace Memorial bridge in Selma, AL where I was sent for pilot training in 1966 by the Air Force.

This gives the expression, "politics makes strange bedfellows" a whole new meaning, since in this case it was not just figuratively but also literally true.

I think Roman might be right. I know some people who might be ashamed to admit that they would vote for Moore, but who would actually vote for him if they had a chance. I think Moore's biggest problem is that his christian fundamentalist theocratic beliefs don't quite offset the fact that he is a wacko looney.

And Ken Blackwell just won the Republican primary in Ohio for governor. He'd campainged with the theocratic Ohio Restoration Project (which has a goal of generating Patriot Pastors) which is apparently a model the RNC wants to bring to other states, seeing as they sent David Barton out to encourage pastors around the country to endorse political candidates in their churches.

Gretchen-

Easy choice - I'll take the one busted for pot.

Hume's Ghost-

I've not seen any direct evidence that the Ohio Restoration Project is theocratic. Rod Parseley is a total fraud, to be sure, but I think a distinction needs to be made between religious righters and real theocrats. Moore is a real theocrat. He has bluntly argued that "God's law" trumps the Constitution and that a judge is bound to enforce it via the common law. But if you've got evidence that the ORP is genuinely theocratic, I'd love to see it.

Roy's campaign may fail, but his minions are still going strong. Protege Tom Parker (Mini-Moore) is leading a group of Moore followers (the Moore-ons) in a bid to take over the state supreme court.

Scary stuff if they win, but right now it makes being an Alabama blogger tons o' fun.

The thought that he could be elected...

Ed, I wish I could buy you a beer, right now.

'nuff 'bout 'Bama, y'all.

Those are cheap shots (although here in Georgia we're allowed to make them, bein' neighbors 'n'all.) Wasn't the most recent, highly visible ID battle in - ahem - Pennsylvania?

These anti-science folks are everywhere, not just down here in Dixie.

Doppler-

Well yes, but this post wasn't about anti-science folks. I dare say you'll be hard pressed to find someone running for governor of Pennsylvania and being taken seriously who had actually advocated the death penalty for gay people, as Moore has done. That kind of thing certainly isn't limited to the south, but it's certainly more virulent there.

Ed -
If being down 2:1 in the primary polls for one party constitutes "being taken seriously," then I'd advise you to check again on the state of the rest of the Union. You'll find plenty of chuckleheads polling double digits.

My point is that it's far too easy for people to write this kind of thing off as "a Southern thing" and miss the scoundrels, some dangerous, in their own backyards. Gay beatings in Wyoming, out of control school boards in Kansas and Penna, hate radio in California... heck, Massachusetts even has a Mormon Governor.

Doppler wrote:

If being down 2:1 in the primary polls for one party constitutes "being taken seriously," then I'd advise you to check again on the state of the rest of the Union. You'll find plenty of chuckleheads polling double digits.

Well, this man was already elected as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. And the fact that 1/3 of any group would consider voting for a lunatic like that makes that a pretty scary group. I certainly don't miss any scoundrels in my own backyard, but come on - this kind of wingnuttery is a lot more popular in places like Alabama and South Carolina and Texas than it is most of the rest of the country.

Ed Brayton said, "I think he might be right. After all, how many of the braindead hicks that would vote for Moore can afford phones?"

That's right. It is totally impossible for people to be intelligent and have faith. And it is totally impossible for smart people to believe that justice is really a moral - and therefore also religious - issue. Anyone who actually believes the Bible is the ultimate authority on truth, reality, and justice must be a "braindead hick" who can't "afford phones."

Talk about ignorant bigotry.

This is the kind of sophomoric arrogance that now dominates the far left. I say sophomoric, because these people think that they know more than what they do. They have a college degree (where they were brainwashed to think as a secular humanist), and so they assume that anyone and everyone who is educated must recognize that justice is not really related to morals or religion.

But if they would humble themselves and think a little bit more, they might recognize that issues of justice, ethics, morality, and politics are fundamentally related to theology.

The very idea that people have rights is a "self-evident truth" that people accept "by faith." But why do we have rights? We have rights because human life is valuable. We have rights because we have been created in the image of God.

I was in Colonial Williamsburg last year, where I saw a living historian impersonate Patrick Henry in the early 1800's. During the Q & A time, a person in the crowd questioned whether he (Henry) could foresee a time in the future when the public display of the 10 Commandments would be considered intolerable. Patrick Henry responded, "The 10 Commandments?! Our whole law is based on the 10 Commandments! You have no need to worry."

Of course, the crowd laughed at the irony.

The secularists reject the authority of God. They prefer the authority of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's "evolving standards of decency." First of all, what are the standards of decency? Second of all, how are they evolving? Thirdly, who decides and interprets what those standards are? Fourthly, aren't these all religious questions in the final analysis?

"The just shall live by faith."