Alabama surprise sows GOP confusion
Politics can be cruel. It was this week for Roy Moore, the Republican candidate to be the next U.S. senator from Alabama, and to President Donald Trump. He strongly, and some might say foolishly, backed the controversial Moore, who lost to Democrat Doug Jones in an upset victory that saw a Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate for the first time in 25 years.
Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country, “ruby red,” as many political observers note. And yet Moore lost, and Trump lost a lot of political credibility, if not actual political clout.
The Alabama election was especially important because the Republicans hold 52 seats in the Senate; lose a couple of votes and legislation stalls. It’s too narrow for Trump to comfortably pass his legislative agenda.
By losing the Alabama seat to a Democrat, that majority was reduced by one. Not only was the Democratic victory a slap in the face to Trump, who had carried Alabama by almost 30 points in the presidential election, Moore’s win complicated congressional politics. And congressional politics is not a game Trump either enjoys or at which he is particularly skillful.
The drama began earlier, when Alabama became more important than usual at the beginning of this year after Trump picked Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.
The Republican governor of Alabama then picked Luther Strange, backed by Trump, to temporarily succeed Sessions in the Senate until a special election could be held.
First came a primary election, when Moore defeated Strange despite Trump’s backing. Moore is a famous, some would say infamous, legal figure who had once been an Alabama’s Supreme Court justice, but who also had twice been thrown off the bench by his colleagues for inappropriate legal actions and behavior. One of those actions was placing a monument of the Ten Commandments on the lawn in front of the courthouse (which he later was forced to remove).
What was generally not known about Moore, despite his loud and often rude behavior, were the accusations brought forward by a number of women about his personal behavior toward them some 40 years ago. Some were just teenagers at the time. The accusations amounted to charges of sexual molestation and assault and created an immediate scandal. Moore immediately and loudly denied all the accusations, but his lead in the polls dropped by about 8 points.
Nevertheless, Trump decided to back Moore despite his initial reservations, noting that Moore denied all the accusations and that the alleged incidents took place some 40 years ago. There was no upside for Trump, because any close association with Moore would only raise the ghosts of Trump’s own scandalous past — he, after all, won the presidency despite being accused by more than a dozen women of improper sexual contact.
Still, there was the cold political calculation that a Democratic win in Alabama would seriously jeopardize the success of Trump’s legislative agenda. And so he stuck with Moore, and Moore’s poll numbers rose. By the time of the special election, Alabama political observers were sure that Moore would actually win. But to almost everybody’s surprise, Moore lost and Jones won.
It appears that Alabama’s black population turned out in droves, as did the wealthier and more educated populations of Birmingham, Huntsville, Mobile and Selma. In rural, conservative areas, many white voters also stayed home. They would not vote for a Democrat, but they did not vote for Moore. The result was an astounding political upset, one that has sent shockwaves through the Republican Party. If Republicans can be defeated in Alabama, they can be defeated anywhere — at least that’s the possibility.
Moreover, Republicans just lost the race for governor of the commonwealth of Virginia, a once red state that now seems to have turned purple and might very well turn blue. The GOP also lost the governor’s seat in New Jersey. The Democrats, it seems, are on a run. The problem is compounded for Republicans because of the civil war that now besets the GOP. It’s not that the Democrats are smarter than the Republicans; they aren’t. It’s just that the Republicans keep shooting themselves in the foot. In Alabama, they just shot themselves in the head.
Bill Stewart writes about current affairs from Santa Fe. He is a former U.S. Foreign Service officer and worked as a correspondent for Time magazine.