Agreed. Moore did not have a good track record for statewide elections and he when he did things like grant that interview to a teenage girl, not campaigning over the last weekend before the vote, and ride to the polling booth on horseback, that all contributed to enough people deciding to stay home. At least we also got to have Al Franken quitting his seat not long afterwards.
Moore may may not have been an ideal candidate and may have made strategic errors, but that did not make it OK for people to lie about him, smear him and get away with it. Every time conservatives don’t stand up and fight for the truth, it has a cost. I wish they’d realize this.
Do some research and check out his track record from the 2006 and 2010 Republican primaries in those Alabama governor's races. He so thoroughly pissed off the Alabama GOP that he destroyed any chance he had to win an election as a Republican candidate. That's why all the prominent Republicans in Alabama came out publicly against him in 2017.
“At least we also got to have Al Franken quitting his seat not long afterwards.”
That’s a good thing, but Franken’s seat went to another RAT, just like the AL seat, and now one vote may well make the difference for the Kavanagh nomination. We cannot afford to piss away seats like we seem to be doing and expect to keep Trump’s agenda going.
I believe what had put off the largest number of Republican voters in Alabama happened well before there was a special election senate campaign
Moore had been elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court twice, and pulled stunts that resulted in his being removed from the court both times. That reminded older residents of how George Wallace also defied federal courts and put the state in the history books forever in very negative ways. Many voters did not want another state official carrying on that tradition and many Republican voters probably stayed home.
Why elect someone to an important statewide office when they lack the judgment and common sense to not carry out defiance of federal courts or laws when he has no chance of winning on a particular issue?
He had very solid support from about 1/3 of Republican voters. Enough to get on the supreme court a couple of times, but he did very poorly in statewide elections after that. He probably kept most of his most loyal supporters, enough to win a special election, Republican primary, but not enough to win the statewide senate vote in the general election.