f Republican grandees in Washington hadn't been so determined to handpick Alabama's next state senator, they might not be burdened now with the law-breaking, religious zealot Roy Moore, a man nostalgic for America's slave-owning past and an alleged child molester, as their candidate in Tuesday's special election.
"It's the stupidest string of nonsense that I've ever seen in my life," Alabama political writer Josh Moon said as he recounted the chain of clumsy missteps and scandals that led Republicans to blunder into this colossal mess of an election with Moore on their ticket.
Establishment Republicans in Washington had wanted former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange to represent the party. Strange had already been appointed to the Senate, picked to serve on an interim basis by then-governor Robert Bentley. That seemed to the D.C. apparatchiks to have gone pretty smoothly.
To Alabama voters it smelled fishy — as though Strange got the Senate seat as a quid pro quo for shutting down his investigation of the governor.
When all the dirt came out, Bentley resigned in disgrace. But Strange came away from it badly damaged, too.
"And so out of that, everybody said, 'You know what? We really hate Luther Strange, and he will never have that Senate seat," said Moon.
'In strolls Roy Moore'
Still, up in D.C., Republican fixers missed all the warning signs and continued spending millions of dollars to mow down every reasonable alternative to their preferred candidate in the Alabama Senate primary.
Strange lost anyway and, says Moon, "in strolls Roy Moore," a former Alabama state judge with a history of controversy. Soon after came the allegations, reported by the Washington Post, about Moore's alleged behaviour with young girls decades ago.
Two women accused Moore of sexual misconduct when they were 14 and 16 and he was in his 30s. Others say Moore attempted to start romantic relationships with them when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.