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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRoy Moores Alabama
ARLEY, Ala. I recently drove the back roads from Birmingham for over two hours before I finally found a sign for Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate, outside the Arley Coffee Shop. A retired coal miner who frequents what the cashier called the liars table put it to me in the familiar Winston County way. The women, he said of Mr. Moores accusers, were lying to make him look like a sexual predator. Groping, he added, used to be all right anyway.
The Free State of Winston is Alabamas most distinctive political culture, and now it may be the center of Americas current political convulsion. Winstonians tend to go to one side or another in a big way, and they dont care what the rest of the world thinks. According to one historical account, the residents voted 515 to 128 for an antebellum legislator who promised to oppose the Ordinance of Secession that took Alabama out of the Union in 1861. Today they believe President Trump is an untarnished Republican savior and are cheering his endorsement of Mr. Moore.
Winston County had one of the highest Trump votes in the nation, almost 90 percent, State Representative Tim Wadsworth, a Republican, told me. Then our Fourth Congressional District had the highest district vote in the nation, and that was in the 80s.
Arleys hereditary Republicanism was fiercely populist before Donald Trump. These hill-country farmers defied the greedy plantation masters who split the Union. Now theyre contemptuous of both the national Republican Party and the elitist Republicans in Alabama cities who are seen as wanting to punish Mr. Moore because working-class Republicans nominated him over the sitting senator, Luther Strange.'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/opinion/sunday/roy-moores-alabama.html?
mountain grammy
(26,623 posts)To display the very worst of America. We got the Seinfeld watching nazi. Now this.
Guess were just this bad
elleng
(130,956 posts)and this is a relevant point of view, filled with observations.
'I have closely studied Winston County history and have long been proud of my ancestral ties. I wanted to explore whether traditional Republicanism could fully explain how the Old Souths most independent thinkers became Trump zombies willing now to send a plausibly accused pedophile to the Senate rather than a Democrat.
This political contest has blasted away middle ground that once existed here in Arley.'
mountain grammy
(26,623 posts)unless her husband can convince her otherwise and this gem:
Today they believe President Trump is an untarnished Republican savior and are cheering his endorsement of Mr. Moore.
I dont feel the least bit enlightened by this piece. Yeah, Alabama IS a state after all, but its been a state of terror for too many too long.