Within hours of Doug Jones pulling off an amazing upset win over Alabama Republicans' most prominent child molester, Republicans were already making declarations about how Jones should now become a Republican because that's what his state really wanted, or just demanding that the Democratic winner vote with conservatives because we are a divided country and being divided means always doing whatever the conservatives want anyway.
The Leni Riefenstahl Tribute Network, otherwise known as Fox News, was out with its own variation bright and early this morning.
“I hope Senator-elect Doug Jones will do the right thing and truly represent Alabama by choosing to vote with the Senate Republican majority,” said Colorado GOP Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Jones’ narrow victory over Republican Roy Moore marks the first time in 25 years that Alabama voters have elected a Democratic senator. The Fox News Voter Analysis shows he won with support from black, young and female voters. But Jones was no doubt aided by the sexual misconduct allegations against Republican Roy Moore. And Alabama remains a deep red state; 62 percent of Alabama voters picked Republican President Trump in 2016.
We only lost because the candidate that we vigorously supported and campaigned for was a child molester is, it seems, an attempt at a humblebrag?
Alabama Republican Party chair Terry Lathan wasn't giving any ground either. After the party worked hard to support a child molester who twice was removed from the bench for violating his Constitutional duties and who has insisted that non-Christians should be barred from holding federal office, state Republicans won't be rethinking any of that, thank you very much:
“Alabamians are conservative and have no intentions of moving toward the policies of the Democrat Party,” Lathan continued. “If Mr. Jones aligns himself with the liberal Democrats in Washington, Alabama voters will remember his choices in the 2020 U.S. Senate election.”
If you are an American today who is, say, as old or older than Roy Moore's preferred dates, you are probably aware of the very predictable Republican dynamic, in the days after any and every close election. If a Republican wins a very close election among a clearly divided electorate, they appear on television the next day to declare that the American People Have Spoken and that the Republican now has a "mandate" for his or her (by which I mean “his”) preferred policy positions. Every single member of the conservative pundit ranks goes on television to make the same declaration. And then we, for example, go to war in Iraq.
If a Democrat wins a much less close election, the Republican candidate, their party, and every conservative pundit willing to put their faces in front of a television camera instead declares that we are a divided country, and the people have spoken, and the message the people have given is that the Democrat must vote with the Republicans and do conservative things once in office because that is what The People really want.
How you interpret that depends, for the most part, on how much credit you are willing to give the Republicans saying that. You might take it as a merely cynical partisan ploy; a willingness to change your beliefs on a dime depending on whether it would or wouldn't benefit your party to do so. Or you might take it as further evidence of a conservative "movement" that is increasingly unwilling to even concede the legitimacy of an opposition party being allowed, upon winning elections themselves, to govern on equal terms with their own.