In a further degradation of the Republican Party, ex-Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore today announced a new bid for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. Moore was voted the Republican nominee in the 2017 special election to fill the Senate seat relinquished by Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but lost to Jones after several women came forward to accuse him of sexually assaulting or molesting them when they were teens. (It was also reported that Moore had been so pernicious in his attempts to approach underage girls that as an assistant district attorney, he had been banned from a local mall.)
Moore's history as elected official is similarly grotesque. Two years after his 2001 election, he was removed from his position as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for violating a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument he had installed in the state judicial building. Returned to the court by voters in 2013, he was again suspended indefinitely for defying another court decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage rights.
Through both of his removals from the bench and the revelations of his sexual predations, Moore's base of evangelical Alabama voters has largely stayed at his side. You should feel free to draw whatever conclusions you like from that.
In a press conference, Moore declared that "never in the history of the nation" was there such an "outcry of opposition" against a Senate bid. Donald Trump was among those who publicly attempted to dissuade Moore from running, though Trump insisted in a tweet that he had "NOTHING against" the court-defying theocrat and child predator.