Roy Moore - Theocrat, Racist, Homophobe, Crook; In Other Words, An Upstanding Republican

It's extremely depressing but actually seems par for the course these days to be forced to note that the Republican nominee for the Senate from Alabama is an avowed segregationist. Besides being a radical theocrat and a lying thief, Roy Moore led the successful fight to keep these words in the Alabama state constitution: "Separate schools shall be provided for white and colored children, and no child of either race shall be permitted to attend a school of the other race." Moore also opposed the removal of a clause in the constitution that was designed to make sure blacks did not get an education by stating that no person in Alabama has the "right to education or training at public expense." Moore claims that removal of this clause would lead to large court-ordered tax increases for Alabamans in order to provide adequate school funding. Because who is interested in giving those people an education. Moore and his supporters make the usual denial that he is personally a racist. But he will use the race card whenever it suits him. I fail to see the difference.

Moore is also a crook and, like other good Republicans, he used a charity in order to steal his money. Moore founded the Foundation for Moral Law, a charity that purportedly believes in the US Constitution but its mission statement says "We believe that the United States of America was founded on the laws of Nature and Nature’s God, and that Almighty God is sovereign over the affairs of men, exercising jurisdiction over the family, church, state, and each individual." Moore, being the good Christian that he is, told everyone that he would not be taking a salary for the part-time work he did for his charity. But the reality is that Moore was taking a $180,000 per year salary, for part-time work mind you, and pocketed over $1 million between 2007 and 2012. As the Washington Post notes, that amount was "compensation that far surpassed what the group disclosed in its public tax filings most of those years." When the charity was too low on funds to pay Moore, he arranged an agreement where the charity would pay him $540,000 or an equivalent stake in the charity's main asset, an historic building Montgomery, Alabama. Moore holds that stake today.

Moore's tenure as a judge is even more tainted. In 2003, he was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to follow a federal court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Judicial Building. Moore himself had commissioned the monument. But that didn't stop Moore. In 2013 he was again elected the Alabama Supreme Court, again as Chief Justice. But he was removed again last year for instructing probate judges to not perform same-sex marriages despite their being ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court. But that didn't stop Moore. Now he is the Republican Senate candidate.

The overwhelming repudiation of Moore by his Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate has been, well, nonexistent. This is after all what the Republican party has become.