Alabama U.S. Senate election: the problem with not voting for Roy Moore

Moore (L) faces Jones (R) for Alabama U.S. Senate seat

The special election for an open U.S. Senate seat taking place in Alabama on December 12 is pivotal for a number of reasons.

One of those reasons is that Alabama residents need to be represented in the Senate by someone who will fight for the values held dear to the majority of the citizens of the state.

The second reason that this election is so vitally important is the continuance of Republican control of the Senate as a voting body.

There are 100 seats available in the Senate, two from each of the 50 states. Currently, the Republican Party enjoys a 54-44 edge with two Independent representatives. Those two, Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, are "independent" in formal affiliation only. They are both reliable Democratic Party votes.

So the actual current working makeup of the United States Senate shows a 54-46 voting edge for the Republican Party. Since most important issues are settled by a simple majority these days, Democrats need to flip just five seats in order to take control.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office for 14 of the last 23 years. Control of the U.S. House of Representatives slipped into Democratic Party control three times during the Obama years.

For the majority of the last two decades, the U.S. Senate has been in Republican Party control. However, that control has usually been by a fairly slim margin. Republican senatorial control has been vital to keeping America from slipping down a Liberal Progressive slope

In Alabama, Richard Shelby was elected to one of the two senate seats as a Democrat all the way back in 1986. However, he switched over to the Republican Party in 1994 as part of the Republican Revolution. Now age 83, Shelby was elected just last year to a new six-year term.

The other Alabama seat was held since 1997 by Republican Jeff Sessions. He became the current U.S. Attorney General in the Trump administration, and Luther Strange was appointed as his temporary successor. Republicans have thus held both Alabama senate seats for over two decades.

Back in September in a hotly contested race, Strange lost a runoff to Roy Moore for the Party nomination to fully succeed Sessions. Moore is now set to face Democrat Doug Jones in the December 12 election. The winner will hold the senate seat formerly held by Sessions through 2020.

Under normal circumstances, Moore might be expected to win this election fairly easily. He is the far more conservative of the two candidates in a state that has gone Republican in Presidential elections for over nearly forty years.

However, these are not normal circumstances. Moore has recently been accused by a half-dozen women of either sexual assault or harassment decades ago. Moore has either denied the accusations, or stated that they were consensual with younger women who were past the age of legal consent.

Moore is a former state judge who served twice as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He has been a colorful, often controversial public figure for decades. His rulings have frequently come down on the side of protecting conservative values.

These accusations have raised questions among some, especially due to their surfacing at this time, with Moore running for such a powerful and influential seat in government.

Folks have had plenty of time to digest these accusations and Moore's responses over the last few weeks. As I wrote this past weekend, people are going to believe what they want to believe on most of these situations.

Numerous liberal publications and commentators, and even some conservative Republican big names, have called for Moore to drop out of the race. They would prefer to have him step aside willingly, and then install a candidate with less baggage into the race. Moore has stated unequivocally that he will not step aside.

Believing what we want to believe

In case you don't pay close attention to the news, perhaps you don't yet know about Roy Moore.

Moore is a controversial 70-year old Alabama politician who is running for a seat in the United States Senate.

A former state judge, Moore has been the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Alabama twice. He has also been removed from that position twice, each time for standing up for conservative causes.

In the first incident, Moore was ordered by a federal court to have a monument to the Ten Commandments removed from the front of the Alabama Judicial Building. He refused, and the Alabama Court of the Judiciary removed him from his office.

In 2016, Moore was suspended by the same body after he ordered probate judges to enforce Alabama's ban on same-sex marriages after those unions had been found to be constitutional. He appealed this time, was unsuccessful, and he resigned earlier this year.

When longtime Republican U.S. Senator from the state, Jeff Sessions, was appointed as the new Attorney General of the United States in the new administration of President Donald Trump, Moore announced that he would seek that office.

In September, Moore won a runoff election to become the Republican Party nominee for that Alabama Senate seat. He will oppose Democrat Doug Jones in a general election on December 12, 2017.

Moore is a strong, outspoken Christian who has made numerous public pronouncements against homosexuality, abortion, and radical Islam. He is characterized by many as "far right" in his political and social beliefs.

Those publicly spoken beliefs over decades, as well as his judicial rulings, have made him a major target of liberal critics in political circles and the news media.

All of this would be enough to make Moore's candidacy in next month's Senate election a major story. But at that point it would, for the most part, simply be partisan politics at play. Now there is even more controversy surrounding the candidate.

Moore has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault decades ago while he was a young prosecutor. These assaults came in the form of what have been described as sexual encounters with teenage girls.

Witnesses have come forward to support some of the women. Those witnesses are able to at least corroborate what they have described as sexual harassment.

For his part, Moore vehemently denies any sexual assault. But he has alluded to relationships with teenage girls who were over the legal age of consent while he was in his early 30's.

A number of folks on both sides of the political aisle, both political office holders and media members, have called on Moore to provide some reliable information to back his refutations. That, or to withdraw from the race.

Moore continues to retain strong support among the Alabama electorate. Results of a reputable poll released today show him with a 49%-43% lead over Jones despite the allegations. Some politicians have said that if Moore does win, they will immediately call for his removal from office.

Moore is just one of many male public figures to face years or even decades-old sexual assault and/or harassment allegations in recent months.

Similar allegations have been made against such celebrity figures as entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein and directors Oliver Stone and Brett Ratner. Actors Kevin Spacey, Steven Seagal, Jeremy Piven, Louis C.K., and Ed Westwick are among a number of other Hollywood figures facing accusations. For his part, Piven has vehemently denied the accusations.

Eerie questions have even been raised regarding the conduct of former Vice-President Joe Biden.