21 responses to “Disgraced Former Justice Roy Moore Leads Poll For GOP Senate Nomination In Alabama”

1. 

   Ebenezer_Arvigenius

   August 7, 2017 at 4:58 pm

   Of course he does …
2. 

   Daryl’s other brother Darryl

   August 7, 2017 at 5:19 pm

   Moore seems like the perfect 1:1 replacement for Sessions.
3. 

   gVOR08

   August 7, 2017 at 5:46 pm

   and prevent this man from becoming a Senator because that’s pretty much the last thing this country needs.

   You say that as though the other two are any prize. Looks like Moore suffers in comparison only because he’s been nationally known as a looney tune for some years.
4. 

   al-Alameda

   August 7, 2017 at 6:26 pm

   Hopefully, whichever candidates ends up running against the former Chief Justice will be able to consolidate the vote against him and prevent this man from becoming a Senator because that’s pretty much the last thing this country needs.
   

   Perfect.
   America is so over.
5. 

   Kylopod

   August 7, 2017 at 6:30 pm

   @gVOR08:

   Looks like Moore suffers in comparison only because he’s been nationally known as a looney tune for some years.

   Which probably means most of the Trumpists will get behind him, not because they necessarily agree with him the most, but simply because he pisses off liberals the most. That’s the most important qualification these days.
6. 

   MarkedMan

   August 7, 2017 at 9:07 pm

   I have to admit that my dark side wonders if we should apply the same judgements and rules on the Trump states that so many within their borders want to apply to people that are much more like them then they are aware, like the Marion Barry voters of a generation ago. At the time, the future Trump voters were basically saying “Why should we keep pouring money into DC when these people keep voting against their own interests, generation after generation?”. And you know, that is a legitimate argument. In my mind, it doesn’t win the day, but at least it makes a valid point.

   So why do we Northerners and West Coasters, as well as the hardworking Midwest keep sinking excess money into the eternally failing Trump states? It seems in these states people are willing to shoot holes in their own life boats because they can’t stand to see the other guy dry. They are willing to drive their school district into debt fighting lawsuit after lawsuit because little Johnny has to have their fifth grade homeroom teacher read them a Protestant prayer. They will vote for anti-union politicians because they want to pull a $22/hour union worker down more than they want to pull their $1 above minimum wage ass up.

   So my dark side says “Let’s amend the constitution so no state can get more out of the Federal Government than it puts in, and let the Trump states deal with it. Here in the rest of the country we would be very happy to use the excess money pouring in to fix our roads, maintain our parks, improve our schools and give ourselves a tax cut to boot.
7. 

   Kylopod

   August 7, 2017 at 9:29 pm

   @MarkedMan:

   So my dark side says “Let’s amend the constitution so no state can get more out of the Federal Government than it puts in, and let the Trump states deal with it. Here in the rest of the country we would be very happy to use the excess money pouring in to fix our roads, maintain our parks, improve our schools and give ourselves a tax cut to boot.

   The problem is, you’d be throwing millions of innocent people to the wolves. For example, close to two-thirds of all blacks in this country live in states carried by Trump. (I checked this out.) You need to consider who you’d really be punishing in this scenario.
8. 

   MarkedMan

   August 7, 2017 at 10:55 pm

   @Kylopod: That’s why I said it was my dark side. I’m a progressive at heart. I believe our world is better served by trying to pull everyone up, as opposed to the American Right view of pissing down on those that make bad choices or simply have bad luck.
9. 

   Kylopod

   August 7, 2017 at 11:46 pm

   @MarkedMan: Point taken. But over the years I’ve seen comments along those lines that are in dead earnest, and I always get irritated. While I am not one who believes in vengeance in any case, it’s always important to keep in mind that there are still millions of Democratic voters in what we call red states, and despite the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” phenomenon, the fact remains that there are a lot of people being punished by GOP policy-making whose only crime is happening to live in those states. All this talk about the white working class (which is frequently abbreviated simply to the “working class,” as if minorities do not work) has resulted in a dangerous myth, so that people are surprised to learn that Hillary actually won the vote of people making less than 100K, and lost among those making above it. The old pattern where the more you make, the likelier you are to vote Republican, did not fundamentally change in this election.

   I remember around the time of the 2013 government shutdown I was seeing liberal commenters suggesting that we should let the GOP keep the shutdown going and destroy themselves in the process. I was in my late teens during the 1995 shutdown, my father was (and still is) a federal employee, and let me just say, it wasn’t fun. It was actually very scary.

   I think one of the cardinal rules of political commentary is to remember that these debates aren’t just abstractions, but affect the lives of millions. Some of the snark from even liberals shows signs of forgetting that.
10. 

    Hal_10000

    August 8, 2017 at 8:03 am

    @MarkedMan:

    Yeeess. Except those “red states pull in more money than they pay” comparisons ignore that people retire to red states and most of our military bases are in red states. So you’re talking about gutting Social Security, Medicare and military spending, with the balance being taken out on the South’s large African-American population.

    Talk about putting holes in the lifeboat to make sure the other guy isn’t dry.
11. 

    MarkedMan

    August 8, 2017 at 10:09 am

    @Hal_10000: I mostly agree with you, except to note that large military bases are sited where they are as a type of military welfare or political bribe, so they should very definitely be considered part of the net outflow from Blue states to Trump states. I would certainly be happy to have the jobs and payments in lieu of taxes associated with these bases back in the various net-outflow states I’ve lived in. I’m currently living in an area with a fairly high military or ex-military population and they make good neighbors, and their lifelong government pensions after only a couple of decades of service as well as their lifelong government healthcare dollars are always welcome in the local economy.

    As fro the high population of retirees in Trump states, it is a feedback loop. People vote for their own perceived financial interests and retirees are notorious for voting against any tax increase whatsoever, voting against capital improvements, school costs, etc. They often bitterly resent Medicaid while fighting like the devil to preserve every dime of their government program, Medicare. I lived in a town in CT that was rapidly aging. We struggled every year to pass a school budget that merely kept pace with the historically low inflation rate. The beautiful new senior center? Passed and the budget overrun accepted without a word. This leads to a situation where towns or counties or states with a high ratio of seniors become less attractive to people with kids and more attractive to seniors.

    Just to repeat, I am not saying we in the better off states should kick our Trump state fellow citizens to the curb. What I am saying is that I feel resentment from time to time about people who make self destructive decisions lecturing me while their hand is in my pocket. And because of that, and despite my mostly progressive beliefs, I am not so quick to judge those Trump staters when they feel that this group or that group are burdens on society. They are very often wrong, or at least misinformed, but I don’t think that feeling resentment automatically puts them beyond redemption.
12. 

    Daryl’s other brother Darryl

    August 8, 2017 at 10:50 am

    @MarkedMan:

    Let’s amend the constitution so no state can get more out of the Federal Government than it puts in

    I tend to agree with Kylopod; that’s a bit of a myopic stand. However, I don’t think it would take long for the people of those states to wisen up. I mean, when you have hacks like Bobby Jindal bragging about balancing their state budget, and the typical LA voter not knowing the difference, it’s a serious problem. Think of it as a piece of educational legislation…a couple years of tough-love in order to get everyone in line.
13. 

    MarkedMan

    August 8, 2017 at 10:55 am

    @Daryl’s other brother Darryl: There is this perennial idea that people have that if only people suffer the consequences of their actions, they will wise up. This may be occasionally true, but for the most part, that’s not how it works IRL. If human beings tended to wise up when they f*cked up we would have been living in Utopia for thousands of years.
14. 

    KM

    August 8, 2017 at 11:18 am

    @MarkedMan:

    What I am saying is that I feel resentment from time to time about people who make self destructive decisions lecturing me while their hand is in my pocket.

    This is a common American gripe, it seems. Is this not the complaints against those who want to raise minimum wage – that they shouldn’t be raising a family on such a low salary and shouldn’t be driving up cost to compensate? Or people lecturing those who make bad dietary and life choices forcing healthcare to become more expensive for the rest of us? Perhaps similar to those who’s feelings on the opioid crisis are why do we need to provide narcan at taxpayer expense to a repeat ODing junkie instead of letting nature take its course?

    I understand your frustration. I really do. We as a nation don’t make the optimum choice regularly – hell, we’re lucky if we make choices that don’t set ourselves on fire daily. At any given time, 50+% want to do A Stupid Thing and are very loud about berating you into letting them do the Stupid Thing Because Freedom!! It’s very *very* tempting to “screw them, let them deal with their stupidity”. But as you mention, we’re liberals so thankfully we’re less likely to give into that impulse then our conservative brethren. Hang in there – venting’s good for the soul, it’s voting for the outcome’s what really does us in. Plus, we’d inevitably get stuck cleaning up the mess as the adults in the room and that’s not something you want on your plate.
15. 

    teve tory

    August 8, 2017 at 11:57 am

    So my dark side says “Let’s amend the constitution so no state can get more out of the Federal Government than it puts in, and let the Trump states deal with it. Here in the rest of the country we would be very happy to use the excess money pouring in to fix our roads, maintain our parks, improve our schools and give ourselves a tax cut to boot.

    You’d have an enormous (even more) third-world country inside the united states. Probly not good for long-term stability.
16. 

    teve tory

    August 8, 2017 at 12:18 pm

    There is this perennial idea that people have that if only people suffer the consequences of their actions, they will wise up. This may be occasionally true, but for the most part, that’s not how it works IRL. If human beings tended to wise up when they f*cked up we would have been living in Utopia for thousands of years.

    On a related note, I see a lot of hand-wringing about low-info voters. “How can we have a functioning democracy when people are dumb enough to vote for (creationism/supply-side economics/global warming denial/Trump/Roy Moore/etc)?” But this is a bad question. Lots of people are dumb or clueless. Lots of people have always been dumb or clueless. Democracy doesn’t require a majority of voters to be smart and well informed. If it did it would never have worked anywhere ever.

    Democracy doesn’t work because smart people vote for intelligent solutions to our problems, though that imaginary hypothetical would be nice. Democracy works because if a government gets maximally shitty, even a mass of dumbasses can recognize that often enough to vote them out and give some other rando a chance. Democracy doesn’t select a great option, it occasionally selects against the absolute worst option, which gives the system a slight bias toward the good.

    Take Kansas for instance. The morons who elected Sam Brownback didn’t all get smarter after 5 years. They’re still morons. Sam Brownback’s policies produced such a Dumpster Fire that even those morons briefly realized it and voted against it. In a few years they’ll probly vote for it again. But that brief awareness of Super-Shittiness is the occasional weak signal that nudges things in the right direction, and keeps democracy barely functioning.
17. 

    MarkedMan

    August 8, 2017 at 12:59 pm

    @teve tory: I’ve wondered if the real benefit of democracy is that it gives people who want power a non-violent way to contest with and vanquish their rivals.

    FWIW I think there are three major requirements for a decent society:
    1) A way to peacefully transition power to an outsider group
    2) The rule of law
    3) Minimal corruption (which requires constant weeding)
18. 

    teve tory

    August 8, 2017 at 2:54 pm

    You are correct, legitimizing the relinquishing of power is a very important thing that happens.
19. 

    Danny

    August 8, 2017 at 8:24 pm

    Who knows, maybe if he wins the election, it will be a repeat of what happened to George Allen in 2006, as unlikely as that is to happen.
20. 

    teve tory

    August 8, 2017 at 9:07 pm

    @Danny: I actually knew the Dem gopher who was paid to go to every Allen rally and videotape him, back in the day. Crashed on his couch in Chapel Hill for a few months. 🙂

    But if Moore repeats Allen, it’s less likely to be “Macaca” and more likely to be “Darkie” or “Coon”.
21. 

    James Pearce

    August 9, 2017 at 11:11 am

    @Kylopod:

    You need to consider who you’d really be punishing in this scenario.

    Yes!

    @Hal_10000:

    Talk about putting holes in the lifeboat to make sure the other guy isn’t dry.

    Yes!

    @MarkedMan:

    What I am saying is that I feel resentment from time to time about people who make self destructive decisions lecturing me while their hand is in my pocket.

    It seems to me that the basic mistake of political Americans circa the 2nd decade of the 21st Century is this tendency to allow resentment to rise above all other considerations.

    How about reacquainting ourselves with magnanimity?