Voting for Less

Your faithful blogging servant has at various times outed himself as conservative in political, economic and theological thinking -- although in the case of the latter he usually likes to use the terms "traditional" or "orthodox."

Nevertheless, he is not a Republican by voter registration, He will frequently vote for Republicans, however, although it is not because he believes they will do a better job of getting a conservative policy agenda enacted into law. It is because he believes that Democrats will do much much worse at getting a conservative policy agenda enacted into law.

All of that said, there is no way to look at the plight of Alabama conservatives and use any rational calculus to determine how to vote in that state's upcoming United States Senate special election. They face a choice between a Democrat whose position on abortion is "Sure, why not?" and former State Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, whose flaws are numerous. Some of them are longstanding and some of them have come to light more recently.

Agonized, some Alabama conservatives have broken for Moore, rationalizing that making Democrat Doug Jones their senator would be Chicxulub-level bad. Writing for National Review, Kevin Williamson makes the case that however bad it would be to elect Doug Jones to the Senate, it would be at least as bad to elect Roy Moore. He's persuasive.

I don't feel sorry for Alabama Republicans. They cast the votes in the primary that got them in this mess, back when it was only obvious that Moore was unqualified rather that clear he was weapons-grade creepy. But I don't feel any desire to see them punished -- they're talked themselves into a situation where they think "Senator Roy Moore" is a win. How much worse off could they be?