Despite bad hat day, Bama bigot seems Washington bound

This post also appears on Daily Kos.

By BERRY CRAIG

AFT LOCAL 1360

Roy Moore, the winner of today’s Alabama Republican primary, showed up at an election eve rally sporting a white cowboy hat and brown vest and brandishing a little silver pistol.

The headgear seemed a tad small. “Maybe it’s a just a five-gallon hat,” mused Melinda, my wife.

The chapeau, riding high above Moore’s ears, made him look like Sheriff Woody from the movie Toy Story.     

Woody was a kind and caring toy doll. Moore is a hate-monger and a full-bore bigot.

"For whatever reason, God has put me in this election at this time and all of the nation is watching," Moore told the rally crowd, according to AL.com, an online news site.

Doubtless, Bama’s Jesus-loves-me-but-He-can’t-stand-you white folks ate it up. 

Last year, AL.com suggested that Moore, a former state supreme court justice notorious for making bizarre and bigoted statements, “seems determined to be remembered with other Alabama icons such as Bull Connor, Jim Clark and George Wallace when history is written about equal rights in America.”

I’d add to that rogues gallery Confederate Sen. William Lowndes Yancey. Before the Civil War, he lectured Yankees, “You are allowed to whip your children; we are allowed to whip our negroes [sic]. There is no cruelty in the practice.…Our negroes [sic] are but children. The bird that can sing and will not is made to sing. The negro [sic] that will not work is made to work.”

Conventional wisdom has Moore beating Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election, but a pre-GOP primary poll predicted a closer race. The survey had a slight lead for Moore, but within the margin of error--making the poll a statistical tie.

President Trump polled almost 63 percent of Alabama’s vote.

Trump backed Sen. Luther Strange, who succeeded Sen. Jeff Sessions after Trump named him attorney general.

Polls showed Moore with a comfortable lead over Strange. Moore won by a little more than nine percent.

“I might have made a mistake,” Trump, in full CYA mode, blurted at a Strange rally last Friday night. “I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake.”

Trump pledged to hop on the Moore bandwagon if he won. 

Tuesday was double trouble for Trump. It was also three-strikes-you’re-out for the GOP’s latest attempt to scuttle the Affordable Care Act. 

Last year, too, AL.com predicted Moore, who was twice tossed off the bench over church-state separation contoversies, would fade away “and be remembered as a bigot, disrespectful of the law and of his fellow human beings. That might be the only memory he has earned in his time in public office. And, hopefully, Alabama's citizens will be remembered as the ones who showed him the door.”

A lot of Alabama white folks just put him on the road to Washington.