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National NewsConservative News
Demos Plan to Use Ten-Commandments Judge in Alabama
By Hugh McInnish
Posted on: February 17, 2005
If political rumors are a dime a dozen, then the one I am about to tell you about is worth exactly five-sixths of one cent.
But that's just the average worth. What is to follow is a rumor above average in its quality, because I have just returned from a weekend in Montgomery, Alabama and have heard this from a person, who here must be anonymous, but who is a Capital City political grandee whose name is prominent in this state. I believe, therefore, that this rumor is worth at least a penny or two. It involves the 2006 Alabama gubernatorial race.
Four people are involved: On the Democrat side, Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley and former Governor Don Siegelman, the two most prominently mentioned candidates for the 06 Democrat gubernatorial nomination. And on the Republican side, Governor Bob Riley and Roy Moore, Alabama’s famous Ten-Commandments judge. The latter two are the most prominent Republican. Here is the story told to me by my informant:
The Democrats, looking to the 06 gubernatorial election, believe that Roy Moore would be easier to defeat than Bob Riley. This conclusion is apparently independent of whether their nominee is Baxley or Siegelman. It is unclear by what logic they have arrived at this conclusion, but I can postulate two factors:
First, Moore lacks the power and influence of an incumbent, a fact that weakens him relative to Riley. Second, the Democrats probably think that they can paint him as an unacceptable extremist, allowing them to move to the right a certain distance in order to satisfy the inherently conservative Alabama electorate. Thus they could clothe Moore with a cloak of tar and feathers, and at the same time show themselves to be acceptable as alternative conservatives.
So far, so good. Now all the Democrat schemers have to do is to fashion a plan that will allow them to chose their opponent. And they believe they have just what they need. Using their majority status in the House and Senate, they will place a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot for the 06 primary election. This will cause Moore supporters to swarm to the polls as never they have before. They will be thicker than flies on spilled syrup. And while they are marking their ballots to ban gay marriage, they will vote for-- Roy Moore!
No one can deny aspects of cleverness here, but no plan, however clever, can give complete assurance of success. If Seigelman should be nominated by the Democrats, he too will lack the power of incumbency. If Riley is the nominee he must overcome the strong lingering taste of A1 Sauce in the mouths of the voters. (For the inattentive, A1 means Amendment 1, a proposal for an enormous tax increase.) And regardless of who the Democrats pick, he or she can never, on social issues, become the conservative lighthouse that Moore is.
Come November 2006, the big Election Scales will be rolled onto the public square, and factors with different weights, some unimagined yet, placed on both sides of the balance. Not until then will we know which way that balance will swing.
Meanwhile, what is your estimate of the worth of this rumor? As I have proceeded to write it out in this report my fondness for it has grown. Is it worth three cents? Maybe a whole nickel?-- How much?
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