(Roy Moore) Conservative's popularity may be problem for GOP

[Syrinx]

If Moore runs, I'll have to vote in the Republican primary. Sigh.

WASHINGTON -- As Republican strategists weigh the party's prospects for 2006 and 2008, they are increasingly worried about a political confrontation with Roy S. Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who became a hero to religious conservatives when he refused to follow a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state's judicial building.

Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he wins, some party strategists speculate, he could defy a federal court order again by erecting a religious monument outside the Alabama state Capitol building. With the 2008 presidential race looming, President Bush would then face a no-win decision: either call out the National Guard to enforce a court order against a religious display on state grounds or allow a fellow born-again Christian to defy the courts.

The pitched political warfare over the direction of the nation's courts has energized many GOP voters, but it has also produced a restless Christian right movement that contends Bush has been too moderate on issues ranging from gay marriage to judicial nominations to the Terri Schiavo case. These conservatives want Moore to run for president as a platform for their cause.

''Moore's a lot like George Wallace," William H. Stewart, political science professor at the University of Alabama, said in a reference to the Democratic Alabama governor who stood in a schoolhouse door to block a federal desegregation order, forcing President Kennedy to federalize and send in Alabama National Guard units.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/14/conservatives_popularity_may_be_problem_for_gop?mode=PF

[jpgray]

1. Good

Let one beast devour another.

[Selteri]

2. Good indeed

Win Roy, bring about your own end.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Oh, yeah. I'm sure they're real worried about

presenting * as a moderate.

[quaoar]

4. Good story

Nominated it.

People like to laugh off Roy Moore, but he is a formidable political force. He is quite likely to be the next governor -- God help us.

[Syrinx]

7. oh, I sure hope not

Hopefully, they'll have an ultra-bloody primary race like the Democrats did in 1988, with Riley remaining standing, only to have Lucy Baxley come along and tip him over. :)

(Thanks for nomination by the way.)

[quaoar]

5. He also has a persecution complex

When older cadets hazed him at West Point, he ''learned how to stand up to intimidation," he writes. As a company commander in Vietnam, he became a ''marked man," he says, because of his insistence on imposing strict discipline on drug-addled soldiers.

As a deputy district attorney in Etowah County in the late 1970s, he was referred for disciplinary action, he said, because he dared question spending priorities in the police budget; in the end he was not disciplined.

In 1982, he failed in his first race for circuit court judge because ''I was a threat to the system, and the system had closed ranks to defeat me."

He lost another race in 1986, this time for district attorney. ''The criminal defense bar united against me, and the opposition among political insiders was too strong to overcome," he recalled.

[Syrinx]

8. yep

That part jumped out at me too!

[BamaLefty]

6. Oh Boy!

Ain't it gonna be fun! I can't wait to see "corporate clash with moral."

I hope like hell that Moore runs for President in '08 as the Constitution Party candidate. Can you imagine the votes that he would get from the truest of all true Kool-Aid voters? Sweet.