Alabama Republican Senate "nominee" Roy Moore is unfit for office. This isn't a debatable proposition. He was twice stripped from his duties as judge for refusing to abide by the United States Constitution—which is a rather goddamn essential document for a would-be public servant to abide by, he twice violated his own oath of office, and he is openly declaring he'll do the same in the United States Senate.
If there was ever a time for national Republicans to cut a candidate loose, this would be it. You can hem and haw your way around sex scandals, you can "wait for the facts to come in" when your candidate appears from all available reporting to be as crooked as a licorice stick wrapped around a wheelbarrow axle, but "openly refuses to acknowledge the supremacy of the United States Constitution over his own supposedly "religiously" inspired rantings" is an anti-American position. By definition.
Here is Roy Moore, crackpot, declaring that God murdered children in Newton, Connecticut, "because we've forgotten the law of God." He has made identical statements declaring that God was behind Al Qaeda's murdering of thousands of Americans. He wrote an angry op-ed declaring that the nation's first Muslim congressman should not be seated specifically because he was Muslim. And none of that holds a candle to his written order to the government officials he was placed in charge of that they ignore Supreme Court rulings he has religious objections to.
If the party can't cast aside this man, an un-American frother with contempt for our system of laws and for the "religious freedom" of any religion other than the one in his own thick head, they need to either close up shop or admit that their patriotism has been a fiction all along. And yet they continue to refuse to speak out.
Here is Wyoming Sen. John Barasso, who does not care: "I want to make sure we hold the seat. I want to make sure he wins in Alabama." Here is Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, fresh off whipsawing between pretended-at concern for his constituents and a party fealty that will forever come first: "I'm just worried about taxes."
Apparently there's not a damn Republican in the nation that has so much as heard of the infamous Roy Moore, to hear them tell it, or who intends to make themselves aware of his history now, or who will not scurry into an elevator and shut the doors in an act of sublime cowardice when anyone attempts to enlighten them of that history. Really? Not one senator is willing to opine?
We are awash in demands that black football players do this or do that, in order to show their deference to the "flag," but not a peep against the man who defies the Constitution and declares it His Own God's Will that he do so? We are forever hearing that religious law will surely overtake us, if we allow refugees and their own beliefs to seep into our rarified essence—there's not ten or twenty words that could be used to caution against the Elmer Gantries who have scribbled would-be government orders demanding religious law take hold? That other religions be declared illegitimate? That homosexuality be treated as a criminal offense against the state?
The worst part about Republican silence is that it's not surprising—not even a little. The Republican frothing about deficits, after all, has always been a farce—a position that was never sincerely held from the outset. The supposed demands that America abide by deep moral convictions has been pissed away in each and every election in which the party of deep moral convictions embraced a pervert in order to maintain power. We are now to the point where it is a given—it is always a given—that the Republican Party will stand by no supposed conviction for longer than it takes them to say it. There isn’t a pundit left in America who even bats an eye when it happens.
There's an opportunity here. There's a glorious, spectacular, glitter-infused opportunity to just once, just one goddamn time in the modern history of the party, be the man or woman to draw the line: We will, as a party, do a great many bad or seedy things but we will never abide a member who wishes to discard the Constitution in favor of a new, personally inspired national religious order. It sounds so asinine and obvious as to be comical.
And it's still not coming.