Roy Moore’s stunning defeat reveals the red line for Trump-style politics | Richard Wolffe
The shock election results saw a Democrat make rare inroads in deep-red Alabama – and will hasten the existential question facing the Republican party
There’s no sugar-coating the stunning defeat for Donald Trump and his cronies in Tuesday’s Senate contest.
There’s no accusation of fake news that can cover the tracks of the disastrous results for the president – and for his supposedly populist politics – little more than one year after his own election.
There’s no comeback for his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who declared war on the Republican establishment by stumping for a toxic candidate like Roy Moore.
Born
Roy Stewart Moore, 11 February 1947, in Gadsden, Alabama, the oldest of five children of a construction worker and housewife.
Best of times
He had a large slab of Vermont granite inscribed with quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the national anthem and the founding fathers installed in the Alabama supreme court. It was topped off with tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
Worst of Times
In Vietnam, Moore insisted his troops salute him on the battlefield. He was named “Captain America” and later recalled sleeping on sandbags to avoid a grenade tossed under his cot in retribution.
What he says
“I think it [America] was great at the time when families were united. Even though we had slavery, they cared for one another.”
What others say
After refusing to acknowledge same-sex marriage legislation, Human Rights Campaign said: “It is clear that Roy Moore not only believes he is above the law, he believes he is above judicial ethics...”
This wasn’t a marginal contest in some familiar swing state, a typical bellwether of political trends. We’re talking about Alabama. One of the most Republican states in the union where there’s a long and violent history of rejecting outside influences, and anything that smacks of progressive politics.
If Trumpism has any future, any constituency moving forward, it should be thriving in Alabama. For months we have all endured the endless reporting from Trump Country where the president’s loyalists say their love of the blowhard-in-chief is undiminished.
Instead, Alabama – the state whose love of segregation gave us some of the greatest flashpoints in the civil rights movement – has drawn the reddest of red lines. There are still limits to what voters consider acceptable behavior, and Roy Moore is on the wrong side of them.
Standing by him are his biggest boosters. Donald Trump chose to waste what little remains of his political capital on a man accused of being a sexual predator of teenage girls. The Republican National Committee tarnished its name by supporting Moore’s campaign in its late stages after earlier abandoning him. And then there’s Steve Bannon, who lambasted every Republican for treating Roy Moore like a cancer on the GOP.
For now, Democrats can enjoy the sight of their first senator from Alabama in a quarter of a century. They can enjoy the moral victory of seeing Doug Jones, who successfully prosecuted two of the racist killers behind the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, triumph over a Republican who seemed to hanker after the days when slavery stained the South every day. Democrats can start recalculating the vote-counts on every legislation now they have narrowed the GOP’s Senate majority to just one.
“I have always believed that the people of Alabama have more in common than what divides us,” Jones said in his victory speech. “We have shown the country the way that we can be unified.”
For Democrats, the winning way is pretty clear: run against the demagoguery and divisive politics of Donald Trump.
For Republicans, the lessons are just as clear, but far harder to follow. In the coming weeks and months, Republicans now need to wrestle with something they have happily ignored for the last year. Alabama’s results will hasten the existential question facing every GOP member of Congress who faces re-election next year: is it better or worse to break with Donald Trump?
Until Alabama, this seemed like an easy calculation. Trump’s obvious failings, his freakish nature and his abusive conduct were all brushed aside because he seemed to have a lock on his party. Who could stand against Trump except senators who already said they were retiring from politics?
Now the balance has shifted dramatically. Who can afford to stand with Trump when the Democratic voters are so energized they turn out in numbers huge enough to overturn the monumental Republican majority in Alabama?
Homosexuality should be illegal
In 2005, Moore said: “Homosexual conduct should be illegal.” In an interview televised on C-Span, Moore added: “It is immoral. It is defined by the law as detestable.” During a debate in September 2017, he went out of his way to bemoan the fact that “sodomy [and] sexual perversion sweep the land”.
September 11 attacks as divine punishment
In a speech in February, Moore appeared to suggest that the terrorist attacks of September 11 were the result of divine retribution against the United States and prophesized in the Book of Isaiah. In comments first reported by CNN, Moore quoted Isaiah 30:12-13, saying: “Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon ... therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance.” Moore then noted: “Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?” He added: “If you think that’s coincidence, if you go to verse 25: ‘There should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall.’"
Praise for Putin
In an interview with the Guardian in August, Moore praised Putin for his views on gay rights. “Maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.” The comments came after Moore suggested the United States could be described as “the focus of evil in the world” because “we promote a lot of bad things”. Moore specifically named gay marriage as one of those “bad things”.
'Reds and yellows’
At a rally earlier in September, Moore talked about “reds and yellows fighting” while discussing racial division in the United States. Moore justified this on Twitter by citing lyrics from the song Jesus Loves the Little Children. He wrote “Red, yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. This is the Gospel.”
Tracking livestock is communism
In 2006, Moore condemned a proposal for a national ID system for animals as “more identifiable with communism than free enterprise”. The proposal received attention after a cow in Alabama had been diagnosed with mad cow disease. Moore, who was then running for governor, was skeptical that the outbreak was real. Instead, Moore suggested it was a ruse intended to promote the tracking system.
The more delusional Republicans will dismiss Tuesday’s results as the fault of a disastrously poisonous candidate like Roy Moore.
Who could vote for a senate candidate who was reportedly banned from shopping malls because of his alleged interest in teenage girls?
What kind of candidate agrees with Vladimir Putin that America is a focus of evil in the world, and who speaks fluent Russian along the way?
But there’s someone on the national stage who bears an uncanny similarity to the profile of Roy Moore. Someone who stands accused of sexual predation on young women, who demonizes the media as much as he lauds Vladimir Putin, and who pretends that his critics are subjugating working class voters. That man works out of the Oval Office.
For the next year, Republican candidates will be hounded at every campaign stop by a simple question: do you approve of Trump’s treatment of women? The party of Moore and Trump is no place for suburban women voters, who have decided the last several election cycles. And women voted by huge margins for Doug Jones in Alabama.
The scale of the surprise is worth measuring. Donald Trump won Alabama by a monumental 28 points just one year ago. The fact that the race was in any way competitive speaks volumes about the disastrous effects of his presidency and Moore’s candidacy.
Two years earlier, Jeff Sessions – the man whose hapless tenure as attorney general prompted Tuesday’s election – won re-election in Alabama with 97 per cent of the vote. These are the kind of numbers that Saddam Hussein used to enjoy in his periodic elections. The remaining three percent of the free votes went to write-in candidates because no other candidate bothered to file in time to get on the ballot.
Even Mitt Romney won Alabama by 22 points in 2012, despite his reputation as a moderate Republican. As much as black voters rallied to Barack Obama with record turnout, they still only represent 25% of Alabama’s population.
In Alabama, the past is never dead in large measure because people like Roy Moore have no idea how the past was experienced by his fellow Alabamians. You don’t need a degree in history from the University of Alabama to understand Moore’s worldview.
At a rally in September, he was asked by an African-American voter in the audience when he thought America was last great. “I think it was great at the time when families were united – even though we had slavery – they cared for one another,” he said. “Our families were strong, our country had a direction.”
Homosexuality should be illegal
In 2005, Moore said: “Homosexual conduct should be illegal.” In an interview televised on C-Span, Moore added: “It is immoral. It is defined by the law as detestable.” During a debate in September 2017, he went out of his way to bemoan the fact that “sodomy [and] sexual perversion sweep the land”.
September 11 attacks as divine punishment
In a speech in February, Moore appeared to suggest that the terrorist attacks of September 11 were the result of divine retribution against the United States and prophesized in the Book of Isaiah. In comments first reported by CNN, Moore quoted Isaiah 30:12-13, saying: “Because you have despised His word and trust in perverseness and oppression, and say thereon ... therefore this iniquity will be to you as a breach ready to fall, swell out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instance.” Moore then noted: “Sounds a little bit like the Pentagon, whose breaking came suddenly at an instance, doesn’t it?” He added: “If you think that’s coincidence, if you go to verse 25: ‘There should be up on every high mountain and upon every hill, rivers and streams of water in the day of the great slaughter when the towers will fall.’"
Praise for Putin
In an interview with the Guardian in August, Moore praised Putin for his views on gay rights. “Maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.” The comments came after Moore suggested the United States could be described as “the focus of evil in the world” because “we promote a lot of bad things”. Moore specifically named gay marriage as one of those “bad things”.
'Reds and yellows’
At a rally earlier in September, Moore talked about “reds and yellows fighting” while discussing racial division in the United States. Moore justified this on Twitter by citing lyrics from the song Jesus Loves the Little Children. He wrote “Red, yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world. This is the Gospel.”
Tracking livestock is communism
In 2006, Moore condemned a proposal for a national ID system for animals as “more identifiable with communism than free enterprise”. The proposal received attention after a cow in Alabama had been diagnosed with mad cow disease. Moore, who was then running for governor, was skeptical that the outbreak was real. Instead, Moore suggested it was a ruse intended to promote the tracking system.
In case you were still confused, Moore is the kind of man who appeared on conspiracy wingnut radio in 2011 to lament the constitution’s amendments that abolished slavery, and gave the vote to women and African-Americans.
His reward for this kind of racism was to energize the very voters he disdained. The African-American voters of Alabama have delivered a crushing blow to Trump-style politics.
It’s only reasonable to expect Latino voters to deliver the same blow to GOP candidates who support their president’s demonization of immigrants. It’s only normal to expect women to disdain Republican candidates who refuse to condemn Trump’s sexual harassment.
And it’s only realistic to expect Donald Trump will learn nothing from his humiliation in Alabama. He will continue to rage against Hillary Clinton, the media, and athletes who protest for equal justice. He will continue to obsess about Twitter and cable television instead of finding a new political path.
The real test of the next year lies not with the president, but with his party. Only one of them has the capacity to change.
This article was amended on 13 December 2017 to note that the Republicans’ majority in the Senate is one, not two, as we previously said. When Jones is sworn in, Republicans will control 51 of the Senate’s 100 seats.
