Presidential run or circus act

If you believe Donald Trump is the most embarrassing candidate for president the Republican Party has ever had, you haven’t met Roy Moore, who recently joined Trump, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and others in the cast of hopefuls being assembled for the Iowa caucuses.And who is Roy Moore, you might reasonably ask. For starters, he is even less presidential than Trump, and that is no small achievement.Moore is the former Alabama judge who once enjoyed a bit of notice for hanging a small, wooden replica of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall. When objections were raised, the Bible Belters rose up and elected Moore chief justice. He expressed his gratitude by transferring the Ten Commandments to the high court, but these tablets came atop a 5,000-pound granite rock that was placed in the court’s rotunda.The courtroom Ten Commandments had survived constitutional challenges but the 2.5-ton rock was a rather showy act of defiance, and a Federal Appeals Court ordered Alabama to pay $5,000, or a dollar a pound, for every day Moore continued to display his rock in the rotunda. This cost him the support of state officials who had previously cheered him on, and Moore was removed as chief justice. You could say when it became a choice between God and mammon in Alabam,’ mammon won.The defrocked chief justice and Roy’s Rock, as it came to be known, then hit the sawdust trail, traveling to Christian fairs and prayer meetings all over the South where they drew large, appreciative and devout crowds. The touring continued until Moore received the call to run for governor of Alabama. But God apparently wasn’t on his side and he lost. He also lost a second try, coming in fourth in a party primary. So what was Moore to do after running twice for governor and losing? Why run for president, of course. Take another look at the names mentioned at the top of this essay and you’ll agree he’s a good fit. So good that conservative writer David Brooks has observed, “Now, it is demeaning to run for president. If you’re a halfway serious person, you have to spend a year standing on stage with circus acts.” Now that he’s running for president in fundamentalist Republican Iowa, it’s been suggested that he take the rock with him on the campaign trail to excite the state’s sizable social conservative population, about all one needs to win the Iowa GOP caucus. (The 2008 winner was Mike Huckabee. Case closed.)Though he emphasizes returning religion to public places like schools and courthouse rotundas, don’t get the impression Moore’s a one-issue candidate. He’s also anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-Sharia law and uncertain that an income tax is really necessary. I couldn’t find his view on President Obama’s birthplace, but I’m confident it is closer to Trump’s than to reality.As the time approaches in Iowa for those circus acts known as debates, it will be interesting to see how many of the so-called serious candidates, the kind who would win in normal times, decide to skip Iowa. Mitt Romney, who spent $10 million there the last time in order to get trounced, is not trying again. But some of the respectable Republicans are. Tim Pawlenty will be there, but The New Republic reported the other day he’s already been infected by his opponents.The former Minnesota governor, an educated man, has become a screaming populist in Iowa, dropping his g’s as both Bushes did when they wanted to hide their Yale roots in the hinterland.“Valley Forge wasn’t easy,” Pawlenty tells the voters, and winning the West or World War II wasn’t easy, either. “This ain’t about easy. This is about rollin’ up your sleeves, plowin’ ahead and getting the job done.” (He apparently forgot to say “gettin’” but he’s new at this stuff.)It looks as if 2012 ain’t gonna be about easy for the rest of us, either.Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.

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