Let’s take a break from Al Franken and focus on this asshole:
GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore stunned some listeners when he said he thought America was “great” during the era of slavery. Though he made the comments at a campaign rally in Florence, Alabama, more than two months ago, they’ve re-emerged in a viral tweet just days before the election.
Back in September, one of the few African-Americans in the crowd asked the candidate when he thought was the “last time” America was great.
“I think it was great at the time when families were united. Even though we had slavery, they cared for one another. ... Our families were strong, our country had a direction,” Moore responded, according to a Los Angeles Times report in September.
At the same rally, he also referred to Native Americans and Asians as “reds and yellows,” the LA Times reported.
Moore’s comments resurfaced Thursday in a tweet by Eric Columbus, who served in the departments of Justice and Homeland Security during the Obama administration. Columbus linked to the LA Times story, saying, “Can’t make this up.” His message was retweeted thousands of times.
Here’s the Tweet:
But Pedophile Moore is now the face of the GOP thanks to the Sexual Predator-In-Chief:
Now that Donald Trump has signaled that he believes Roy Moore should be the new face of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill, he has placed every one of his fellow Republican leaders in a tough position.
They must take a stand. That stand can be with Trump and Moore and a vision of a Grand Old Party that will embrace even its most reprehensible candidates as better choices than the most honorable Democrats. Or it can be with a vision not just of the GOP but of American politics as a higher endeavor that seeks to address rather than extend the nation’s challenges.
There is no middle ground.
Trump is clear about how he wants the Republican Party to define itself. In his view, it should place partisanship above principles—aggressively and unapologetically. The president is blunt:
Democrats refusal to give even one vote for massive Tax Cuts is why we need Republican Roy Moore to win in Alabama. We need his vote on stopping crime, illegal immigration, Border Wall, Military, Pro Life, V.A., Judges 2nd Amendment and more. No to Jones, a Pelosi/Schumer Puppet!
With his choice, Trump has made Moore, who stands accused of molesting teenage girls, a defining figure and a defining choice for top Republicans.
And while most Republicans stay dedicated to getting this Pedophile elected to the U.S. Senate:
The Moore test has been useful in its own way. It has exposed corrupt leaders. President Trump’s eventual endorsement of Moore was predictable, given his personal interest in discrediting the credible accusations of exploited women. The support of the Republican National Committee revealed a political party with no judgment, no standards and a cloudy future among the young and morally sentient. All Moore’s allies and enablers have marked themselves as unfit for leadership. The untainted — among them Sens. Mike Lee, Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Thom Tillis, Lindsey O. Graham, John McCain, Steve Daines, Bill Cassidy and Ben Sasse — are far and away the best positioned to play positive roles in a Republican recovery.
The Moore test has exposed corrupt arguments. All those who say “Let the voters of Alabama decide” are applying popular sovereignty to a matter of basic morality. Abraham Lincoln would not be amused. If Republicans have any remaining ties to the great man, they will not count votes when fundamental principles are at stake. We do not let the people decide on the rights of minorities. And the people do not decide on the rules of morality.
And the Moore test has exposed corrupt institutions. The basic argument here — that ethics can be ignored in the process of doing great work in the world — is precisely what brings institutions into disrepute. The Catholic Church covered up sexual predation on the justification that it was otherwise doing great work in the world. Some evangelical Christians are now publicly playing down credible charges of sexual predation for the same reason. And they are doing tremendous damage to the reputation of the Christian church in the process.
Though I probably don’t say it enough, many evangelicals are doing great work in the world — feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and welcoming strangers. But a self-selected, highly visible group of politicized evangelicals is engaged in a remarkable project. Once they were known for harsh moralism — for being eager tutors in our national sins. Now they argue that character doesn’t count and that the ends justify the means. The moral majority has somehow lost its taste for decency.
I want to give a shout out to this GOPer:
GOP strategist Stuart Stevens said Thursday that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore would have "had a date with a baseball bat" if he had tried dating teenage girls in his hometown.
"I grew up in Mississippi. Every father I knew, if he saw a guy like Roy Moore in his 30s trying to date his 16-year old daughter, he would have had a date with a baseball bat," Stevens, a former aide to Mitt Romney's campaign, said on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360."
Stevens, who worked on former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's (R) primary campaign against Moore in 2006, said that Moore has violated the "decency standard" of civil society in his previous alleged pursuit of teenage girls.
Meanwhile, Doug Jones (D. AL) has been focused on getting out the black vote to help defeat Moore:
Doug Jones' bid to become the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Alabama in 25 years could hinge on whether he convinces African-Americans -- the party's only reliable voting bloc in the deep-red state -- to turn out in huge numbers.
Jones faces an opponent in Roy Moore whose white evangelical base has stuck with him through decades of controversy -- including two removals as state Supreme Court chief justice and the
allegations that he pursued sexual relationships with teenage girls while in his 30s.
Jones needs African-Americans -- who make up the majority of Democratic voters in Alabama -- to match the Moore base's furor. He's focused his schedule in the final two weeks of the race and his message on reaching those black voters.
Jones campaigned last Friday in a predominantly black church on the anniversary of Rosa Parks' 1955 arrest for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. On Saturday, he marched in the Christmas parade in Selma, the cite of the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in 1965. Jones on Sunday visited nine churches in Tuscaloosa, courting largely black voters.
On the campaign trail, he's highlighted his work prosecuting two Ku Klux Klan members in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls -- and contrasted it with the sexual allegations facing Moore.
"Men who hurt little girls should go to jail, not the United States Senate," he said in a speech Tuesday.
But black leaders have criticized Jones, saying he hasn't offered enough details about what he'd do for African-Americans if he wins.
"I think many of them are asking 'What are you going to do for me today?'" said State Rep. John Knight, the chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, who is supporting Jones. "We try to explain to them it's much more than just Doug Jones. It's the future of this state, it's their future, it's the image of Alabama, it's attracting jobs here."
Black voters make up nearly 27% of Alabama's electorate -- and those voters are the core Democratic electorate in a state where the parties are divided largely along racial lines:
A CNN exit poll found that only 15% of white voters in Alabama backed Barack Obama in 2012, while 95% of black voters there supported Obama's re-election.
Jones' campaign hopes to see African-Americans make up 27 to 28% of the electorate in Tuesday's special election.
That wouldn't be enough on its own: Black voters were 28% of Alabama's electorate in 2012, and Obama still lost the state by 23 points. To win, Jones will have to pick off moderate white voters, too -- or hope that they stay home -- on top of African-American turnout close to Obama levels.
Is that even possible?
"I hate to say it but he's no Barack Obama," Knight said.
"In my opinion if you want that kind of turnout you need Barack Obama here," State Rep. Earl Hilliard said.
Knight said the allegations facing Moore have "helped in terms of energizing the base, but I think we still have a lot of work to do between now and December 12."
I for one think it would be great to have Obama on the campaign trail but rising star black Democrats are helping Jones energize voters:
Democratic Senate nominee Doug Jones and his allies are finalizing plans to bring in several high-profile current or former African American elected officials, including Sen. Cory Booker, to campaign for him this weekend in Alabama as he wages an aggressive final push to turn out black voters in a Tuesday special election with national stakes.
Rep. Terri A. Sewell (D-Ala.) has been leading the effort to organize a slate of Sunday campaign events including a rally in Birmingham that is expected include her, Jones, Booker (D-N.J.) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), according to Sewell spokesman, Chris MacKenzie and a Jones campaign official.
A third Democrat who was familiar with Booker’s plans confirmed that he intends to campaign for Jones in Alabama.
Former Massachusetts Democratic governor Deval Patrick also plans to campaign for Jones in Alabama, according to his former chief of staff, Doug Rubin.
Sewell is also trying to cement plans for Rep. Cedric L. Richmond (D-La.) and Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. (D-Ga.) to campaign for Jones on Sunday, MacKenzie and the campaign official said.
The way I see it, this race is still a Toss Up and FiveThirtyEight has some great perspective here:
The polls in Alabama have swung back and forth between Moore and Jones over the past month. The Washington Post first reported on allegations against Moore on Nov. 9, and after that, surveys indicated that the race was moving in Jones’s direction. He held an average advantage of 5 percentage points in polls that were taken six or seven days following the story. Since then, polls have Moore ahead by 3 points, on average, although Jones led by 3 points in a Washington Post poll. (That’s the only recent survey that meets FiveThirtyEight’s gold standard.transparency initiative, a member of the National Council on Public Polls or a contributor to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archive.
When an electorate seems to be volatile and there aren’t many high-quality pollsters in the field (by traditional standards), it’s wise to tread lightly. It’s possible that voters will turn on Moore again in the final week of the campaign.
But even if Alabama’s special election were just a normal Senate campaign with normal candidates, a lead in the low single digits would be far from secure. Simply put, Senate polling has not been especially predictive over the past 10 cycles. Among the 2,075 Senate polls in the FiveThirtyEight database that were taken within 21 days of an election, the average error has been 5.1 percentage points. And that has been fairly consistent across cycles. The 2016 Senate polls featured an average error of 5.2 percentage points.
The average error tends to understate the chance for a large miss, however. The true margin of error (i.e., the 95 percent confidence interval) is significantly wider. For the polling in Senate campaigns since 1998, it’s closer to +/- 13 percentage points for any individual poll. There hasn’t been a single public poll taken in Alabama since the Republican primary runoff that has given either Jones or Moore that large of a lead.
And the chance of a big error may be unusually high in Alabama. Because of the unusual timing of the election, pollsters may have a difficult time determining who is going to turn out to vote. In the 59 Senate polls for special and runoff elections since 1998 that we have (admittedly, not a huge sample), the average error has been 5.8 percentage points. That’s nearly a point larger than the average error for all Senate polls.
There’s more. Alabama’s election could present even more challenges to pollsters. Some Republicans may be ashamed to admit to pollsters that they are voting for someone facing sexual misconduct allegations. Others may be reluctant to vote at all because of the scandal. As I have previously pointed out, slight differences in who pollsters expect to turn out can make major differences in how big Jones’s or Moore’s polling lead is. Both the Post and YouGov have shown that likely voters are more favorable to Moore than the larger universe of registered voters. So, Moore may have a turnout advantage, though it’s difficult to know.
Let’s seal the deal and win this damn race! Click here to donate and get involved with Jones’ campaign.