Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III was the gift that kept on giving, until he didn’t. His elevation to Generalissimo El Trumpo’s – apologies to Ted Rall – cabinet left his Senate seat open. The GOP primary to fill it was a freak show. Yet, it was more than a freak show. It was a syllabus of the Republican Party’s vices and the race grew more perverse as it proceeded. The revelation of “Judge” Roy Moore’s alleged high regard for young, delightfully young, women came later. On the plus side, the GOP tomfoolery opened the lane for Doug Jones to secure the seat, a good, albeit temporary, outcome. The Washington Post passed on this missive too. I can’t image why, he mutters to himself once again ironically.
Robert Costa, “Trump’s Fraying Relationship with GOP Colors Ala. Special Election,” The Washington Post, 14 August 2017, A1, A4 (www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/trumps-feuding-base-faces-showdown-in-alabama-senate-race/2017/08/13/b37a6f24-7ed6-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html).
Perhaps the special election for the US Senate seat in Alabama would be a sadly amusing farce were it not an image in microcosm of the maladies besetting the GOP: a religious bigot and homophobe (former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore) vies with a Tea Party zealot (US Congressman Mo Brooks) to unseat a hard-right apparatchik (US Senator Luther Strange) installed by a rank family-values hypocrite (former Alabama Governor Robert Bentley) to serve in place of an unqualified and ethically compromised US Attorney General (Jefferson Beauregard Sessions) who may have perjured himself in his confirmation hearing, each candidate kowtowing to Mr. Trump for his endorsement, each candidate posturing as more Trumpian than Trump. This reality is made sadder by the probability that the Republican Party primary may as well be the election itself in deep red Alabama. With candidates and a political culture such as these, how can President Obama’s forlorn wish for the breaking of the GOP’s “fever” ever be realized?