By Quinn Hillyer, December, December 8, 2017<\/p>\n
Mobile, Ala. \u2014 In a curious way, the sex-abuse allegations against Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican Senate candidate, may actually be helping his campaign.<\/p>\n
The continuing conundrum for his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, is that nowhere near enough<\/a> Alabamians believe the allegations. Indeed, a noticeable backlash has hyper-energized Mr. Moore\u2019s volunteers and a cohort of generally apolitical citizens now furious at the spreading of what they consider viciously false smears.<\/p>\n The even bigger problem, of course, remains: Mr. Jones is an openly liberal Democrat running in one of the nation\u2019s most heavily Republican states.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why a contest that even 10 days ago seemed remarkably fluid looked by the middle of this week to be turning into a rout of Mr. Jones by Mr. Moore \u2014 unless two of Mr. Moore\u2019s more outlandish comments, unearthed late Thursday afternoon, re-stir the pot.<\/p>\n A savvy Republican veteran of D.C. and south Alabama politics explained over burgers early this week why the race had seemed so unpredictable for most of November. He said he knew plenty of Republicans who were bothered by Mr. Moore\u2019s record: two evictions from his job as the state\u2019s chief justice, along with repeated assertions that homosexuality should be criminalized and that the First Amendment does not protect Muslims. Now, the activist said, these Republicans had decided that the sex-abuse allegations finally provided them with an excuse not to vote for Mr. Moore. But that isn\u2019t the end of their decision-making.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re still not sure,\u201d he said, \u201cwhether that\u2019s an excuse to vote for Jones, or instead to cast a write-in, or perhaps not to vote at all.\u201d<\/p>\n As Jonathan Gray, a local conservative political consultant who isn\u2019t working the Senate race, explained to me midweek, those permutations in wavering Republicans\u2019 mind-sets are crucial. He felt that not enough habitual Republican voters would go all the way to Jones, so he predicted a Moore victory.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Moore starts at 55 percent and Jones at 45, it does Jones no good if an extra 5 percent of Moore voters just stay home or cast a write-in,\u201d Mr. Gray said. \u201cUnless they switch all the way over to Jones, the Democrat still loses.\u201d<\/p>\n That wasn\u2019t the conventional wisdom just two weeks ago. Over Thanksgiving weekend, a country-club golfer captured the confusion by laughingly predicting a scenario involving tens of thousands of husbands and wives sitting down for dinner the night before the election, still unsure of how to vote. In each house, he envisioned the wife leaning toward Mr. Jones and the husband toward Mr. Moore. Two hours later, he said, they would go to bed having each persuaded the other to change their minds three times without ever arriving at the same simultaneous solution \u2014 and would wake up the next morning having swapped conclusions again overnight.<\/p>\n But those scenarios are now ancient, dating all the way back, my gosh, to November.<\/p>\n Instead, a series of polls and anecdotal evidence suggested in the past week that support for Mr. Moore was rallying and that larger numbers of Alabamians now believe the worst allegations against him are fake news. This may be hard for outside political junkies to understand. But political junkies often don\u2019t have a clue how voters think. Avid politicos may think a reasonable reader would conclude that most of the accusations against Mr. Moore are credible. But most Alabama voters, even now, haven\u2019t actually read the original reports. Most of them get their news in snippets, either by word of mouth or in TV reports they half-see while herding kids to the breakfast table.<\/p>\n The easy, not-immediately-illogical assumption by most voters is that allegations from 40 years ago, against a man in the statewide public eye for 25 of those years, are inherently suspect if they arise suddenly in a campaign\u2019s final month. Voters don\u2019t parse the details, and many of them consider Washington Post stories to be mere noise from the hated elites.<\/p>\n I am now hearing this refrain not just from those inclined to like Mr. Moore, but from women who say they have always disliked the judge. They say that they may vote for Mr. Moore next week in anger at what they perceive as sleazy smears against him coming from distant politicians they detest.<\/p>\n Mr. Gray, the consultant, says Washingtonians still don\u2019t fathom the extreme level of heartland anger against how government \u201cshoves things down their throats\u201d by interfering with how they raise their kids, sneering at their faith, denigrating America\u2019s heritage and regulating them half to death.<\/p>\n The Moore campaign has played upon these feelings with effective (but mendacious<\/a>) commercials<\/a>, painting the allegations as \u201ca scheme by liberal elites and the Republican establishment.\u201d His door hangers carry dual banner taglines: \u201cPrinciple over politics\u201d at the top and \u201cAlabama over Washington\u201d at the bottom.<\/p>\n At a joint rally Tuesday night for Mr. Moore and Steve Bannon, the Breitbart provocateur and Trump confidant, those sentiments were repeated like talismanic refrains throughout the milling crowd, 1,500 strong.<\/p>\n \u201cI know about the globalists, and I think the media are globalist controlled,\u201d one middle-aged woman told me as though we were sharing a secret. She went on to explain that the only news source she trusts is the conspiracy-minded Infowars<\/a>.<\/p>\n As plenty of overheard snippets of conversation attested, she was no outlier.<\/p>\n Cody Phillips, the extremely genial president of the Baldwin County Common Sense Campaign (the local Tea Party\u2019s name), said he thinks Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, is behind the attacks on Mr. Moore. Also, he said, he is sure the leftist billionaire George Soros \u201chas provided a lot of money from the Democratic side.\u201d<\/p>\n And of course Mr. Bannon himself kept repeating variations of the demagogic charge that \u201cthe globalists in Washington, D.C.,\u201d eagerly anticipate that \u201cif they can destroy Roy Moore, they can destroy you.\u201d<\/p>\n These people at the rally are absolutely not supporting a man for the Senate despite believing he fondled a partially disrobed 14-year-old. They are supporting a man they think did no such thing, but who is being attacked by powers resentful of Mr. Moore\u2019s supposed moral authority on issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and public religious displays.<\/p>\n As for Mr. Jones\u2019s well-run, well-funded campaign, it is using glossy mailers to highlight vivid details of the young women\u2019s allegations, trying to cut through the fog to humanize the accusers and show that they are credible.<\/p>\n Until Thursday afternoon, this tack appeared as Mr. Jones\u2019s only remaining chance to win. The Jones campaign\u2019s theory seems to be that instead of disaffected white workers forming a Nixonian silent majority, as sometimes happens elsewhere, there may be a silent but large-ish minority of soccer moms seething against Mr. Moore. The style of these suburban women may not involve turning up the political volume, but Mr. Jones can only hope they turn out in unusual numbers to express by ballot their disgust at everything they think the defrocked judge represents.<\/p>\n Even then, a whole lot of them still must persuade their husbands, too, over election eve dinner and drinks.<\/p>\n That last job might be made easier by the re-airing Thursday afternoon of a summer interview in which Mr. Moore said that Ronald Reagan\u2019s old charge that the Soviet Union was \u201cthe focus of evil\u201d could now be applied to the United States, and that he and Vladimir Putin might find themselves in agreement on that subject.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, another interview, this one from September, was also getting renewed attention. In it<\/a>, Mr. Moore said that the last time America was great was \u201cwhen families were united \u2014 even though we had slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n If those words suddenly energize a high African-American turnout, this race might just be competitive after all.<\/p>\n \n Quin Hillyer\u00a0is a contributing editor for National Review Online.<\/p>\n