Key quote from the NY Times editorial this morning: "Some Republicans have taken to describing Mr. Moore as a type of biblical plague visited upon them. That ignores the complicity of a party in thrall to its extremists. At every pivotal moment, Mr. Moore was aided by party leaders unwilling to take a united, moral stand against him."
That statement of GOP weakness is as true of its support of Donald Trump as of Roy Moore. The Republican Party allowed extremism in service of corporate profit and greed to overwhelm logic and common sense to the point that citizens must do their own work of reversing everything that the GOP claims in order to ferret out the truth.
There will be a day of reckoning for inflicting so much chaos on the United States, on values we cherish that once made us the standard bearer of liberty around the world. Something different is happening as a result of Trump: despots and dictators are embracing his traits and tactics like calling journalists "fake". The reckoning approaches and it has a date: November 6, 2018.
Roy Moore Loses, Sanity Reigns
By THE NY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 12, 2017
That Alabama’s voters chose Doug Jones for the United States Senate is cause for celebration. A triumph for decency and common sense in a state that seemed for a time at risk of abandoning both, Mr. Jones’s win narrows the Republicans’ Senate majority and delivers a deeply deserved rebuke to President Trump. It is hard to get too intoxicated by a slim victory over an atrocious candidate, a suspected sexual abuser with bigoted politics, but Alabama, the Senate and the nation will be a whole lot better off with Mr. Jones than with Roy Moore.
Alabama’s deep-red politics argued against Mr. Jones’s chances. A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Jones won convictions of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls, and no Democrat had won a Senate race in two decades. But a report in The Washington Post in which four women accused Mr. Moore of sexually harassing or abusing them as teenagers turned the race into a close contest. Mr. Jones’s victory came thanks to overwhelming support from Alabama’s African-American voters.
Mr. Jones received support from various luminaries, including Barack Obama, as well as an unexpected assist from Alabama’s senior senator, Richard Shelby, a Republican. “I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” Mr. Shelby said. “The state of Alabama deserves better.” Maybe it shouldn’t count as statesmanship to oppose a cartoonishly unfit candidate, but during the degrading and hyperpolitical Trump presidency, it does.
Mr. Moore’s campaign has been a shame for Alabama, one of the nation’s poorest states, whose need for better-paying jobs, health care, education and infrastructure he almost entirely neglected. He did not abandon the race even as the sex abuse charges multiplied; instead, aided by the political nihilist Steve Bannon, he doubled down, insisting the women were lying, part of a plot by the “establishment” and “fake news” to prevent him from changing Washington.
Mr. Moore was twice removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court, once for flauting a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he’d commissioned for the court building, later for ignoring the United States Supreme Court’s protection of gay marriage by ordering Alabama probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses, saying it was their “ministerial duty.” After that uproar, he decided to run for the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, when Mr. Trump appointed him attorney general.
Mr. Moore repulsed many Alabamians even before the campaign. He has referred to Native Americans and Asians as “reds and yellows,” called gay people “perverts” and homosexuality “an inherent evil,” and falsely claimed that Shariah law exists in Illinois and Indiana.
Until Mr. Moore (and Mr. Trump) came along, it was difficult to find many candidates so unfit that credible charges of child molestation could seem only the latest disqualifying feature. Their popularity underscores some Christian conservatives’ seeming determination to apply the law, constitutional or moral, only to their opponents.
Some Republicans have taken to describing Mr. Moore as a type of biblical plague visited upon them. That ignores the complicity of a party in thrall to its extremists. At every pivotal moment, Mr. Moore was aided by party leaders unwilling to take a united, moral stand against him.
“Roy Moore will always vote with us,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Election Day. Alabamians said there was more at stake in this race, choosing a candidate whose record was cause for pride, not shame, one who spent his career battling bigotry, not exploiting it.
That statement of GOP weakness is as true of its support of Donald Trump as of Roy Moore. The Republican Party allowed extremism in service of corporate profit and greed to overwhelm logic and common sense to the point that citizens must do their own work of reversing everything that the GOP claims in order to ferret out the truth.
There will be a day of reckoning for inflicting so much chaos on the United States, on values we cherish that once made us the standard bearer of liberty around the world. Something different is happening as a result of Trump: despots and dictators are embracing his traits and tactics like calling journalists "fake". The reckoning approaches and it has a date: November 6, 2018.
Roy Moore Loses, Sanity Reigns
By THE NY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDDEC. 12, 2017
That Alabama’s voters chose Doug Jones for the United States Senate is cause for celebration. A triumph for decency and common sense in a state that seemed for a time at risk of abandoning both, Mr. Jones’s win narrows the Republicans’ Senate majority and delivers a deeply deserved rebuke to President Trump. It is hard to get too intoxicated by a slim victory over an atrocious candidate, a suspected sexual abuser with bigoted politics, but Alabama, the Senate and the nation will be a whole lot better off with Mr. Jones than with Roy Moore.
Alabama’s deep-red politics argued against Mr. Jones’s chances. A former federal prosecutor, Mr. Jones won convictions of two Ku Klux Klan members for the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls, and no Democrat had won a Senate race in two decades. But a report in The Washington Post in which four women accused Mr. Moore of sexually harassing or abusing them as teenagers turned the race into a close contest. Mr. Jones’s victory came thanks to overwhelming support from Alabama’s African-American voters.
Mr. Jones received support from various luminaries, including Barack Obama, as well as an unexpected assist from Alabama’s senior senator, Richard Shelby, a Republican. “I couldn’t vote for Roy Moore,” Mr. Shelby said. “The state of Alabama deserves better.” Maybe it shouldn’t count as statesmanship to oppose a cartoonishly unfit candidate, but during the degrading and hyperpolitical Trump presidency, it does.
Mr. Moore’s campaign has been a shame for Alabama, one of the nation’s poorest states, whose need for better-paying jobs, health care, education and infrastructure he almost entirely neglected. He did not abandon the race even as the sex abuse charges multiplied; instead, aided by the political nihilist Steve Bannon, he doubled down, insisting the women were lying, part of a plot by the “establishment” and “fake news” to prevent him from changing Washington.
Mr. Moore was twice removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court, once for flauting a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument that he’d commissioned for the court building, later for ignoring the United States Supreme Court’s protection of gay marriage by ordering Alabama probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses, saying it was their “ministerial duty.” After that uproar, he decided to run for the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, when Mr. Trump appointed him attorney general.
Mr. Moore repulsed many Alabamians even before the campaign. He has referred to Native Americans and Asians as “reds and yellows,” called gay people “perverts” and homosexuality “an inherent evil,” and falsely claimed that Shariah law exists in Illinois and Indiana.
Until Mr. Moore (and Mr. Trump) came along, it was difficult to find many candidates so unfit that credible charges of child molestation could seem only the latest disqualifying feature. Their popularity underscores some Christian conservatives’ seeming determination to apply the law, constitutional or moral, only to their opponents.
Some Republicans have taken to describing Mr. Moore as a type of biblical plague visited upon them. That ignores the complicity of a party in thrall to its extremists. At every pivotal moment, Mr. Moore was aided by party leaders unwilling to take a united, moral stand against him.
“Roy Moore will always vote with us,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Election Day. Alabamians said there was more at stake in this race, choosing a candidate whose record was cause for pride, not shame, one who spent his career battling bigotry, not exploiting it.
1 comment:
May 11, 2017 EO.
Post a Comment