{"id":5462,"date":"2005-10-06T12:22:48","date_gmt":"2005-10-06T16:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=5462"},"modified":"2005-10-06T12:22:48","modified_gmt":"2005-10-06T16:22:48","slug":"rove-was-worried-about-roy-moore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/rove-was-worried-about-roy-moore\/","title":{"rendered":"Rove was worried about Roy Moore"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early 2004, Slate’s Tim Noah suggested<\/a> the political landscape needed a right-wing Ralph Nader to balance the scales a bit. The Dems had to worry about splitting the anti-Bush vote by having a far-left candidate on the ballot, so it’s only fair that the Bush gang worry about an ever-further-right candidate doing the same thing to them. Noah recommended<\/a> James Dobson, though I argued<\/a> at the time that the more likely candidate was Alabama’s Roy Moore.<\/p>\n

All the elements were there. The right-wing base loved both his theocratic ideas and his willingness to ignore federal court orders. Moore has no real love for the Republican Party, which offered tepid official support during his legal crisis (Alabama’s Republican governor and attorney general said he’d gone too far and they stepped in to enforce the law.) There was even a vehicle for a Moore campaign — the ridiculously right-wing Constitution Party, which has a spot on the presidential ballot in 41 states.<\/p>\n

As Noah noted<\/a> yesterday, it turns out the Bush gang actually worried about this very scenario<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There was … great trepidation in the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign that Moore would enter the 2004 presidential election and siphon off enough voters to throw the race to John Kerry. <\/p>\n

[Karl Rove] allowed the campaign to intervene in Alabama to make sure that Moore’s replacement as chief justice wasn’t announced until after the filing deadline for third-party presidential candidates<\/b>, for fear of offending Moore and provoking him to enter the race. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes I think Rove’s reputation for omnipotence is overstated, but it’s examples like this one that suggest the rumors are true.
\n
\nRegardless, the Republican establishment better keep worrying about Moore. He’s been reciting some bizarre poetry at right-wing events nationwide, including gems like this:<\/p>\n

We’ve voted in a government
\nthat’s rotting at the core,
\nAppointing Godless Judges
\nwho throw reason out the door.<\/p>\n

Too soft to place a killer
\nin a well-deserved tomb,
\nBut brave enough to kill a baby
\nbefore he leaves the womb. <\/p>\n

You think that God’s not angry,
\nthat our land’s a moral slum?
\nHow much longer will He wait
\nbefore His judgment comes?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Tim Noah mentioned<\/a>, the government we’ve “voted in” as been dominated by Republican office-holders for a while now. Doesn’t that necessarily imply that Moore believes God is “angry” with Bush and his cohorts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early 2004, Slate’s Tim Noah suggested the political landscape needed a right-wing Ralph Nader to balance the scales a bit. The Dems had to worry about splitting the anti-Bush vote by having a far-left candidate on the ballot, so it’s only fair that the Bush gang worry about an ever-further-right candidate doing the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}