HARLAN RICHARDS
December 26, 2017

Alabama, I Salute You

I heard on the news that Roy Moore lost the special election to the U.S. Senate in Alabama. I can't even tell you who he ran against. The winner was a Democrat who focused on mobilizing his supporters, but I believe his greatest attribute was that he was not Roy Moore.

Mr. Moore was the worst of the worst when it comes to right-wing ideologues. In true conservative fashion, he had a sordid past which included on preying on teenage girls, refusing to obey orders of the U.S. Supreme Court, and claiming to champion the rights of ordinary citizens while espousing policies which had the opposite effect.

President Trump chose to record robocalls in support of Mr. Moore. In spite of the sexual misconduct allegations, the National Republican Party supported him to the end, making the cynical calculation that having a perverted conservative in the U.S. Senate was better than having a Democrat. That miscalculation will come back to haunt them in November 2018 elections.

Even so, I had such a low opinion of Alabamans that I expected Mr. Moore to win and I am pleasantly surprised to see that he didn't. Maybe Alabama and the rest of the south is finally coming into the 21st century. For those who don't know recent political history, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was hugely unpopular among white southern voters. Until its passage, the southern states voted consistently Democratic, which left Democrats in power of Congress for decades. Racism was deeply entrenched in the south, and they resented the abolition of racial discrimination in 1964 as much as they resented federal troops stationed in the south after the Civil War.

It is only now, generations later, that southerners are getting back to their roots—voting for the candidate who will fight for the poor and downtrodden. I believe this is because people coming into adulthood after the passage of the Civil Rights Act are starting to outnumber the old folks who believed in racial discrimination as the natural order of things. Mixed race couples (and their children) are commonplace now. It's not what color you are (or your parentage) but what your values and beliefs are.

The 2017 Alabama election showed the rest of America how to stand up to the tyranny of the elites. I pray that the rest of the country (especially Wisconsin) follows their lead in 2018.