The "Ten Commandments Judge" battles to become Alabama's governor

[ruggerson]

Just what we need. More clinically insane people running state governments and getting a national stage.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008436

MONTGOMERY, Ala.--Most politicians would kill for--or spend millions of dollars to acquire--the name recognition Roy Moore has in Alabama. Not necessarily the kind of name recognition, mind you. Just the level.

That's because here, and across the country, he's known not just as Roy Moore, but as "Roy Moore, Ten Commandments Judge"--the Southern Baptist-cum-chief justice of Alabama who defied a federal court order to remove his 2 1/2-ton monument to the Commandments from the state courthouse, and lost his job as a result. It's a moniker that wins him automatic support in some quarters, and deafens ears before he even opens his mouth in others. And as he runs for the Republican nomination for governor in his native state, that notoriety is both a blessing and a curse.

Roy Moore makes no apologies. "I'm not trying to dodge or get away from my past," he tells me over lunch at a Montgomery seafood restaurant. "I think what we stand for in this state is exactly what our motto is: 'We dare defend our rights.' And Alabamians have always dared defend our rights, whether it be Martin Luther King, or what I did, or the beginning of the Civil War. We dare defend our rights."
At the same time as he makes this boast, there's no doubting that much of his campaign is devoted to explaining his past and persuading voters to look beyond it. "You've got to understand what the issue was with the Ten Commandments monument," he says. "And that is the message that must be gotten out first, to open the eyes and the ears of the people to understand that I do have more than that. It was more about principle than politics. . . .

"When they don't understand that it wasn't about a monument, or the Ten Commandments, or disobedience of a federal court order, but about obedience to the U.S. Constitution and the acknowledgment of God which cannot be prohibited by any authority, then when you get that message out, you can go to the platform, they start to see that."

(more)

[Warpy]

1. The people of Alabama seem to be rejecting him, overall,

if his poll numbers are to be believed. Contrary to the impression one gets from their incredibly poisonous radio stations, worst in the south, they're not all foaming, hate spewing fundies there. Some of 'em are downright reasonable.

My fervent hope is that Mr Moore goes on to found his own Party of Gawd, so that hate spewing bigots all of this country can find a home where they don't have to pretend to want to get along with the rest of us.

Then he will have served his purpose.

[nealmhughes]

2. Roy is a shameless self-promotes who is the Anti-Jefferson.

Here are just a couple of posts I made earlier in the winter and spring on the Honorable Roy S. Moore.

http://onroysmoore.blogspot.com/

Note his reliance on Blackstone and Jefferson's refutation of Blackstone on "godly mandates" and his shameless association of organizations that bear suspiciously familiar sounding name, such as the Methodist Church and National Clergy Council...

I'd rather dine in Hell with Tom Paine, Voltaire and Tom Jefferson than to be in Roy's Heaven.

[Nickster]

3. Dammit, someone needs to tell him he needs to run for President!

Can you imagine the split in the GOP vote if he did run? WOW!