And the polls are open. The Alabama Republican primary to replace ex-Sen. Jeff Sessions, now ensconced as the person in charge of hollowing out civil rights laws in the Trump administration, at least for as long as he can continue to dodge Trump's tantrums, is emblematic of the state of the Republican Party in roughly a dozen ways. The race is between appointed Sen. Luther Strange, favored by party elders because he is not Roy Moore, and Roy Moore, favored by the Alabama base because he is a twisted, crooked, and open theocrat who has made a name for himself on the State Supreme Court by repeatedly ignoring laws and court orders on the grounds that God Himself has nullified those laws, because reasons.
So the battle lines are drawn between a far-right burn-it-downer and a far-right burn-it-downer who is manifestly incompetent and quite possibly not in his right mind—a man whose selling point, to the Republican base, is a deep-seated contempt for both the Constitution and society at large. We've been here before, and the manifestly incompetent nut vowing to do illegal things because he damn well wanted to is now holed up in the Oval Office. He spends most of his time there watching TV.
If the polls are correct, he may soon be joined by a man who believes he is the singular interpreter of What Jesus Wants, and vows to inflict it on as many people as possible. Behold the modern Republican Party; if there's an ideology underneath any of this that does not revolve around sticking it to the rest of the country just for the sheer pleasure of doing so, it's been long buried.
But what a fight it's going to be. You've got white nationalist-enabler Steve Bannon, fired from the White House and back in his old gig demanding far-right rule or bust.
Mr. Bannon did, though, take aim at the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, who has helped oversee a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign against Mr. Moore, calling Mr. McConnell and his allies “the most corrupt and incompetent group of individuals in this country.”
A vote for Mr. Moore, Mr. Bannon argued, “is a vote for Donald J. Trump.”
You've got Donald Effing Trump backing the more pliable, McConnell-backed Strange, most likely because his handlers told him to. It was left to Vice President Pence to make a case for Strange not primarily based on self-praise and perpetual smirking:
“I’m here tonight to say: I stand with Luther,” Mr. Pence declared. “I stand with President Donald Trump – and I will always stand for our national anthem.”
Ah, Mike Pence. A true warrior for whatever topic you put in front of him. Meanwhile, Roy Moore is doing his level best to convince voters he's as goddamn crazy as the base sincerely hopes he is.
Mr. Moore spent 20 minutes longer at the microphone after entering to the strains of “Sweet Home Alabama” clad in a leather vest and cowboy hat. He also briefly brandished a pistol on stage.
Roy Moore is the sort of candidate non-conservative writers would scribble up for the purpose of mockery. He waves a pistol around and shouts about Jesus; he runs for office and then declares himself above the laws that got him there. A decade ago he'd be a bit player in a satirical play, an Elmer Gantry rip-off or the third pig from the left in a thin Orwell work.
Now the Republican Party is locked in a bitter struggle to prevent him from becoming the "real" Republican, and them the also-rans, and after two decades of running the shop as an outlet for tirades and conspiracies and whatever crackpots can make the most belligerent statements or promise to do the most dramatic acts of arson they are on the edge of losing the whole party, in its entirety, to the monsters they created.