Who did what?

Politics just keeps getting stranger and stranger

President Trump has made hay with his manipulative claims of “fake news,” finding plenty of core supporters willing to believe journalists fabricated stories while many of them have been more than willing to blindly accept any claims emerging from the president’s.

Oh, there’s plen- ty of fake information making its way around the Internet. It usually travels faster than the speed of light when it’s particularly juicy and too many people stand ready to repeat the information based on an exciting headline alone. Purveyors of such tales rely on short attention spans, inattention to detail and lackadaisical attitudes about whether information is true or not. And they find lots of people willing to take it in, hook, line and sinker.

Reputable news sources employ people and processes designed to get the best verifiable information and to report it. Readers don’t often get a peak into those efforts, but through reporting and vigorous editing, many would be surprised to know just how much information is researched, questioned and evaluated then unused because its veracity cannot be established.

The truth is the real news is wacky enough without any effort to embellish it.

Take, for instance, the selection last week in Alabama of Roy Moore as the Republican nominee (and likely winner) to the U.S. Senate. That’s the same Roy Moore who formerly served as chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court before he was (twice) removed from duties. The first time was over his refusal to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the courts building. The second after he urged the state’s judges to defy federal orders about same-sex marriage.

Moore ran against an appointed incumbent who had the backing of one Donald Trump, president of the United States and a politician popular in Alabama. Finally, the people of Alabama put Roy Moore where he needs to be, at least if he’s going to be an elected official. He’s been behaving like a legislator for years on the bench.

In a more local example, the announced candidates in the race for the Arkansas House of Representatives District 97 might have given some voters whiplash with developments in the contest to replace Rep. Bob Ballinger.

Ballinger announced in June he will seek the state Senate seat in District 5. Two men — Gary Morris, 70, of Sonora and Harlan Breaux, 70, of Holiday Island — subsequently announced plans to seek the Republican nomination for the District 97 post. Both men said they were supportive of Arkansas’ Medicaid expansion known under Gov. Asa Hutchinson as Arkansas Works.

But get this: Morris last week announced a switch to, of all things, the Democratic Party. He said he’d been a Republican for decades, having gone to the Republican Convention in 1976. But it’s clear to see that today’s Republican Party is a fairly significant variant of that one. Morris said he had discovered while campaigning in his district that Republicans in his district don’t care much for the Medicaid expansion he supports.

So, we suppose this is a reverse-Reagan, in which Morris didn’t leave the Republican Party, it left him.

Well, Morris might have moved a bit: He acknowledged last week he supported Bernie Sanders in last year’s presidential race.

Get a program, folks! You can’t tell the players without a program.

So, as of last week, Breaux was the only announced Republican and he’s got the backing of Ballinger, which might sound odd given Breaux’s support of the Medicaid expansion. But WAIT, there’s more! As of last week, Breaux said he had also changed his mind. No, he’s still a Republican, but he no longer supports Arkansas Works.

Next year’s election cycle promises to be a wild ride.