The presumptive front runner for Alabama’s soon-to-be vacant Senate seat in 2022 is current U.S. House Representative Morris Jackson “Mo” Brooks. You may recall Brooks from the riot of January 6, where he spoke at the rally immediately preceding the near-coup, pretending to be the epitome of the everyman, with his camouflage hat and hunting jacket. It’s the sort of pose one strikes down here to endear himself to the archetypical rural Alabama voter. Anyone with half a brain knows that it’s all an act and the man himself is all an act, but people still cast their votes for him anyway.
Al.com’s Kyle Whitmire does an admirable job of consistently poking holes through all the arguments and incomprehensibly stupid things that Brooks says. Whitmire’s voice is desperately needed, but there aren’t enough of his kind to serve as a counter-weight to Brooks’ crazy ideas and nonsensical behavior. In introducing his piece, Whitmire harkens back to our last GOP idiot Senate candidate, Roy Moore, who was only defeated due to his unfortunate predilection for underage women. This led to the election of Democrat Doug Jones, who served out the remainder of Jeff Session’s term, which Session vacted when he was tapped to serve as Trump’s attorney general.
Democrats were understandably thrilled that they had pulled off the improbable, but Jones won due to the support of women and Black voters. Even with a severely damaged candidate, Jones won by the narrowest of margins: 673,896 for Jones, 651,972 for Moore. That does not portend well for the voters of this state, who very nearly elected a pedophile with a fondness for underage women, despite numerous, glaring accusations that dated back several years. My purple suburb’s voting precincts broke down like this—52% for Jones, 48% for Moore. The state’s demographics were very similar.
So far, Brooks’s political career has been a lot of spite and little substance. In Congress, he’s blamed rising sea levels on rocks falling in the water. (Whenever I mention that, somebody thinks I made it up, but that happened.) He has undermined the leadership of better Alabama officials, like when he called Gov. Kay Ivey’s coronavirus mitigation efforts “nanny-state” directives, all while not having the sense to delete his dumbest tweets about the virus.
In January, Brooks led efforts to overturn a lawful presidential election and he still refuses to acknowledge the “fraud” he alleged has been dismissed or disproven in the courts.
The most effective thing he might have ever done was stoking a crowd of insurrectionists to pay a visit to the U.S. Capitol before they left Washington on January 6.
But he refuses to own it.
As the same folks he told to “start taking down names and kicking ass” beat up police officers and ransacked the Capitol, Brooks blamed Antifa. After he was called out for his incendiary comments to the mob, he insisted he was talking about 2022 elections.
Brooks is another in a series of mean-spirited, narrow-minded, niggling ideologues this state has produced, going as far back as George Wallace. And now he is in the driver’s seat to be elected the junior Senator from this state, which with his incompetent leadership will fall further and further into irrelevance. He’ll be good for a sound-byte or two, he’ll raise the blood pressure of liberals and Democrats, but he’ll really be at the beck and call of Donald Trump. He will leave behind little to no legacy of his own, except as the consummate yes man.
Trump was expected to give his blessing in the race to an entirely different candidate, but seems to have reversed course.
But within days, [former ambassador to Slovenia, Lynda] Blanchard’s effort to position herself as the Trump-approved candidate in the race was thrown into jeopardy as it became clear that the 45th president was leaning toward supporting Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) in the GOP primary for Shelby’s seat. Four people familiar with Trump’s thinking said Brooks was his preferred candidate and would most likely receive an endorsement in the foreseeable future — if not on Monday, when Brooks is due to formally launch his campaign, then at a later point in the race.
“President Trump could jump out on Monday and do it, but he is also interested in waiting to make a big splash later on,” said one of the people familiar with Trump’s thinking.
No one at this stage in the game seems to know to what degree Trump still holds power within the Republican Party. GOP leaders proved themselves easily bullied and intimidated by his bluster while he was in office, instead of making a strong stand against him. They still seem to think he is necessary to their cause, but I think of Trump as the schoolyard bully that will continue to terrorize everyone until someone finally stands up to him, thumps him on his nose, reducing him to little more than the insecure baby he really is. Mo Brooks is cut from the same cloth. It’s no wonder he has courted Trump’s favor so assiduously.
Whitmire again:
After Brooks’s colleagues in the U.S. House proposed censuring him for his role in the Jan. 6 insurgency, Brooks published a bizarre, meandering diatribe online, boasting of, among many other things, his safe driving record and the fact he’s never smoked a cigarette. If anyone is hoping some woman, or man, might come forward to end Brooks’s career like Moore’s, they could be waiting for a long time.
What you see is what you’re going to get. And that should be enough to disqualify him. Brooks has learned nothing in the last few years. But the question is, have we? Because there’s no side door out this time. No shortcuts.
Alabama has rarely drafted competent leaders to be its elected representatives. The brain drain from this state to places elsewhere is extreme. This state seems to pride itself on being a never-ending source of cheap labor, holds a strong anti-union stance, and provides obscene tax breaks for foreign automakers who are willing to locate plants within its borders. In sixty years or so, ever since the Civil Rights Movement, it has progressed from a tragedy to a joke, and we have no one but ourselves to blame for that.
But our college sports teams, especially our football team, consistently wins championships. Indeed, they always have, ever since shortly after the Civil War. I would still prefer much more important reforms like adequate and increased Medicaid funding, prison reform, non-regressive taxation, and a focus on environmental preservation—to name but a few. But down here, one has to take what one can get. Sports is fun, but it doesn’t put foods in hungry stomaches or put roofs over peoples’ heads. Ours is a case of multiple misplaced priorities. And voting for clowns like Mo Brooks is only one of them. God help us.