Bad Elephant of the Year 2017

Failed US Senate  (AL)  Nominee Roy Moore
courtesy of the New Yorker

This is another in my annual mock award series that comes with no plaque, stipend, or other award, except for dubious recognition in a few bytes of cyberspace. This one followed my initial recognition of Dems behaving badly (Jackass of the Year). Of course, neither major political party holds a monopoly on virtue or vice, and I felt it was only fair that the GOP, which has no shortage of relevant candidates, get their own award. It became even more prominent once I left the GOP last year over Trump clinching the nomination.

This year, of course, there's a ridiculously significant rationale for Trump to win again: his failure in reforming ObamaCare, his self-inflicted wounds on Comey and Mueller, the visitor bans and the Wall, his cowboy, hypocritical foreign policy, his threats to NAFTA and other protectionist schemes, his debasing the Presidency through his use of Twitter, his slamming GOP legislators and even his own Administration, etc.

You could also talk about:

• Trump's troubled former associates (Flynn, Manafort, Bannon)
• former Congressman Tim Murphy, alleged pro-life but advised his mistress to get an abortion.
• GOP Senators breaking ranks on ObamaCare repeal, and others.

But in my judgment we have a runaway front runner who clinched the award by losing a safe GOP Senate seat to Democrat Doug Jones. I think almost any other Republican in the state, even a yellow dog, would have beaten Jones. I did see Moore as the lesser of two evils,but I never believed, in the aftermath of seeing other states lose sure GOP Senate seats in Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, and Delaware, that Alabama Republicans would nominate a twice-failed former state chief justice.

I tweeted fairly early that if I was in Alabama, I would have written in a vote for incumbent Sen. Strange, Sessions' successor. I found the allegations of Moore's interest, at a time he was working in the district attorney's office over 25 years ago, in certain underage girls ethically questionable and certainly hypocritical as a prominent social conservative. What I don't understand is why it became an issue during the general campaign, it hadn't surfaced earlier. No party vetting, etc.

But when it surfaced, Moore was politically dead. Even his future GOP fellow senators wanted nothing to do with him. Initially the party refused to fund him, probably trying to pressure him to withdraw. Were the allegations unfair? I don't know, but there are thousands of lawmakers without comparable allegations.

Me, I don't get it. I didn't go on a first date until college, and she was older, I think 21-22. I think I've only dated a teenager once--she was 19, and I don't think her folks liked who she was dating and was pressing her to date other people. (I met her folks on my first and only date; they loved me.) I was a doctoral student in my 20's; she was quite attractive and a very nice young women, but it was very clear we had nothing in common. I decided not to pursue the relationship (although she told my Catholic Newman friends that we were dating). I think most of the women I've dated were in their 20's at the time. But I have 4 little sisters who went through their teens, and dating someone that age just comes across as very creepy. (Of course, I'm much older now than I was in grad school.) I don't care if these teenage girls were infatuated with an assistant DA in his 30's or 40's; he should know better.

The point is, this scandal was going to last through the campaign, and it drowned out the issues. Win or lose, it was going to damage the party. At a certain point, you need to take one for the team. Moore wasn't a team player; he was very selfish.