Tag Archives: Alabama election

national news

Alabama cedes national attention to … Utah!

Many Americans, including me, were fascinated by the election of a U.S. senator from Alabama.

The election turned out the correct way. It was a big surprise. Democratic nominee Doug Jones won and is now the senator-elect from one of the nation’s strongest Republican-leaning states.

Now we have another state. It’s out west. It’s Utah. Orrin Hatch is the U.S. Senate’s longest-serving Republican … in the history of the Senate! He is considering whether to run for an eighth six-year term. Sen. Hatch, though, does not have the backing of Utah’s largest newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune, which named him “Utahn of the Year,” but said he earned the “honor” by demonstrating a new level of crass political ambition. The Tribune wants voters to choose someone else if Hatch decides to run again; the paper, obviously, wants him to retire.

If Hatch does call it quits, it opens the door for Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee and a man considered the odds-on favorite to be elected to the Senate in 2018.

Utah drama shaping up

Why is this so fascinating? I’ll tell you. Hatch is a Donald Trump ally; Mitt Romney is, um, not an ally of the president. Sen. Hatch gave Trump his backing on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act; he stood behind the president on the GOP-authored tax cut.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, calls Trump a “fraud” and a “phony.” He despises the way Trump has lied; he detests the president’s disparaging of individuals and groups.

Would a Sen. Romney be as closely tied to Trump as Sen. Hatch. I would hope not.

I have developed a significant respect for Romney since the 2012 presidential election. He was courageous enough to deliver a blistering speech during the 2016 campaign in which he hung the fraud and phony label on Trump.

Sure, Trump pondered whether to appoint Romney as secretary of state. The men shook hands. They seemed to bury the hatchet.

But my hope would be that Romney would travel down a more independent path than Hatch has trod.

My request of Sen. Hatch? Listen to what the Tribune said about you. Call it a career. As the Tribune noted, Hatch told Utah voters in 1976 — the year he was elected for crying out loud — that senators shouldn’t stay too long.

national news

One fear is coming true

I expressed some concern that the loser of the Alabama U.S. Senate race wouldn’t concede gracefully to the winner. The fight got seriously nasty, you know?

Sadly, it’s proving to be the case.

Roy Moore lost to Doug Jones by about 1.5 percent, which is outside Alabama’s mandated recount margin of .5 percent. Moore, the Republican nominee, was supposed to beat the Democrat Jones.

He didn’t.

Moore said Tuesday night he would “sleep on it.” I hope he got a night’s 40 winks. Except he awoke today and still hasn’t done what he ought to do: Place a call to Jones, tell him congratulations and pledge to “work with” as he transitions to the U.S. Senate.

At least, the president of the United States — who had endorsed Moore — managed to fire of a congratulatory tweet late last night.

But … this is what we can expect I suppose from the guy accused by several women of sexual misconduct.

Here’s the good news, though: Doug Jones won. The senator-elect will take office with or without a concession from the guy who lost.

national news, political news

GOP about to engage in un-civil war

Intraparty conflicts aren’t pretty. Just ask any Democrat who got caught in the 1960s-70s battle that damn near destroyed that party in the wake of the Vietnam War.

I am thinking the Republican Party is about to launch a rhetorical bombardment on its own in the aftermath of that stunning loss in Alabama, where Democrat Doug Jones beat Republican Roy Moore in the race for that state’s U.S. Senate seat.

Let’s re-trace a few steps for a brief moment.

  • Moore challenged U.S. Sen. Luther Strange, the Republican appointed to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, who became U.S. attorney general. Donald Trump endorsed Strange, campaigned for him and then watched him lose the GOP runoff race to Moore, who had been backed by Trump’s former senior White House strategist, Stephen Bannon.
  • Then came the allegations against Moore from several women who accused him of sexual misconduct. “Establishment Republicans” began fleeing Moore. They withdrew their previous endorsement. Senate GOP leaders said he was unfit for a Senate seat. Then the president decided belatedly to endorse Moore, meaning that Trump and Bannon were back on the same team.
  • Moore then lost the election to Jones, a former federal prosecutor. The race was close but it falls outside the margin that triggers an automatic recount. Moore hasn’t yet conceded to Jones. Trump congratulated Jones. Then he tweeted something about how he knew all along that Moore couldn’t win, that the “deck was stacked against him.” What utter crap! The deck was stacked in Moore’s favor, given Alabama’s tradition of backing Republicans over Democrats.

So, what does the Republican Party do now? Does it continue to fight among itself? Bannon considers himself to be a “kingmaker.” His latest candidate for U.S. political royalty has been toppled.

As for Trump? Well, his instincts aren’t so great either. No surprise, given that the president had zero political experience prior to being elected to the highest, most exalted office on Earth.

I sense an un-civil war is about to commence.