Tales Of A Lesser Moore, Con't

Alabama's special Senate election is two weeks away as Roy Moore and Doug Jones battle it out, and Steve M. has noted a new write-in challenger has appeared.

A retired Marine colonel who once served as a top aide to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly plans to launch a long-shot write-in campaign Monday afternoon to become Alabama’s next senator, with just 15 days left in the campaign.

Lee Busby, 60, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., said he thinks that the allegations of sexual impropriety against Republican nominee Roy Moore have created an opportunity for a centrist candidate to win more than a third of the state’s votes in the Dec. 12 special election....

Busby, who was lacking any formal campaign structure or even a working website as of Monday morning, said he is counting on social media to spread the word about his campaign. He said he plans to run as an independent on his record as an investment banker, military leader and defense contractor and entrepreneur. He spent the weekend working on a logo and said he is just starting to explore the legal requirements for raising money for a campaign.

Steve argues that Col. Busby is the GOP's last-ditch effort to help Moore.

It's likely that a certain number of voters who normally vote Republican have qualms about Moore, because they think his God-bothering goes too far or because they're disturbed by the sex allegations against him. Some might be thinking of voting for Democrat Doug Jones -- but if they find out about Busby's campaign, they can vote for him without voting for either Moore or (horrors!) a Democrat. So I think the candidate Busby could hurt is Jones.

Or, more likely, Moore's going to win by a comfortable margin. Polls are close, but I suspect that many GOP voters will come home at the last minute, or have already settled on Moore but aren't saying so out loud. If they need an excuse for their moral relativism, they can just say that John Conyers and Al Franken are still in office, so why not a perv who's their perv? However, I hope I'm wrong.

He's probably not wrong at all.  A Moore victory by 8-10 points is still the most likely scenario. Alabama had no problem voting for Trump, he won by 28 points. Why would they be bothered voting for Moore? And yes, if Moore wins by that much, it will mean that the very credible accusations made against him will mean precisely nothing to Alabama voters as the polls showed Moore with a close to a double digit lead in October, before the story of his long history of sexual assault broke.

So yes, I fully expect Moore to win and win easily.  Republican voters in Alabama are simply telling themselves that the allegations against Moore are fake news.  They will vote for Moore anyway, because Republican voters who still vote Republican these days are just as awful as the Republicans they vote for.

Maybe this will finally get that fact through people's heads, and Democrats will finally stop chasing them.  I hope I'm wrong, but after Matt Bevin's massive win in 2015, I take all state polling with a large deposit of salt.

We'll see.