A few days from now, you Alabama voters will walk into a polling place and surrender your vote to an electronic voting machine or a ballot box. Your choice, like the cut of a carpenter, will be irreversible. You may want to measure twice before you cut once, unless you want to end Donald Trump’s presidency.
Human beings are endlessly adaptable. We are driven to endure, to persist; the flesh surrenders before the spirit. From the horrific to the mundane, life finds a way. John McCain withstood the unimaginable in a concentration camp. An alcoholic takes it one day at a time. With sufficient ticks of the clock, we become inured to drenching political deception as if it were inevitable as the rain.
There are people who live in Buffalo and others who eat Brussel sprouts, although no one can imagine why. What we cannot or must not change, we learn to tolerate.
The Roy Moore scandal broke 34 days before the December 12 Alabama election. That was dozens of scandals ago, a painful political eternity. The dramatic intensity of this choice has wrung emotions out of you like a towel. Exhausted, you are reverting to norm and have built Moore’s behavior into his stock price. Now you wonder if your choice should hinge on something more important: Not partisan politics, not your revulsion at voting for a Democrat, but your country’s survival and success?
You Know the Arguments for Roy Moore Well
Your country is in trouble. The unifying idea of this exceptional American nation, open to all who would nourish it, strong and proud in the world, has been crumbling before your eyes. Your identity has been mocked by a condescending elite that wields identity politics like a club, jeers at your faith, and celebrates national erosion. Blind to what they have done to your country, they applaud their own failures as accomplishments.
It was all going down the tubes until you put Trump in the Oval Office. Now, when the wind is finally beginning to blow the right way, you wonder, “Why should I punish my country for Roy Moore’s failings?”
Another Democrat in Washington to vote for endless spending, higher taxes, porous borders? Another Democrat in Washington to sacrifice the American soul for do-gooder programs that only do good for those who legislate? If you add one more straw to our political burden, one day soon, the nation’s back will break and we may never make America great again.
The media has got it all wrong: You are not choosing Moore over Doug Jones. You are voting to save your country. Perhaps you must swallow your pride and your principles and send Moore to Washington? After all, Democrats learned to live with Bill Clinton. Reprehensible or not, Moore is a fireman. Jones is an arsonist. Perhaps you must live with the embarrassment of Moore to protect your country from the flames?
Roy Moore Would Be a Gift to Nancy Pelosi
Yet that short-term calculation does not rest easy. What if Moore is not a fireman? What if he is propellant, political kerosene that will send the GOP and Trump’s presidency up in a blaze?
Moore in the U.S. Senate would be a gift to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They would hail him as the GOP’s poster boy. Leading up to the midterm elections of 2018, he would star in every Democratic attack ad and a constant barrage of assaults on Republican candidates by the new media.
The Left would glue Moore’s name to every ballot in every congressional and Senate race, and the battle ground is different than in Alabama. Republicans now hold 23 congressional districts Hillary Clinton carried. Democrats need only 24 seats to take the House. Even without Moore as the face of the Republican Party, the GOP House majority is in jeopardy.
Add a 5 or 6 percent Democratic bump of angry, anti-Trump, anti-Moore, suburban, educated women who pour out to the polls in a movement that extends “the reckoning,” and the GOP House is no more. The Senate could fall apart, too. And then?
A Democratic House would waste no time impeaching Trump. A jump-ball Senate, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, would be forced to try him. Democrats would vote unanimously to remove Trump from office. And some establishment Republicans, no different than Democrats when it counts, would love to rid themselves of Trump, too. They could go back to business as usual under the wounded presidency of Mike Pence.
In the chess game of politics, sometimes you are required to sacrifice a pawn to save the king. What, on Tuesday, December 12, will be your choice?
You are not just electing Moore or Jones. You must choose between sending Moore to the Senate and losing the House. You must choose between one GOP Senator from Alabama or three or four fewer GOP senators from other states. You must choose between Moore in Washington and the premature end of Trump’s presidency.
More often than we think, the right thing to do is the smart thing to do, too. Measure twice and cut cleanly. Keep Moore at home. You will have wiped a smile from Schumer’s face.
