His record may not look that way to most Democrats, but by Alabama standards, Sen. Richard Shelby is a classic centrist. Elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 1986, and re-elected in 1992, he switched to the Republican Party after the landslide of 1994 gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives (for the first time in 42 years), and of the Senate. He’s had no trouble getting elected ever since, most recently, age 82, adding another term to his incumbency in 2016, winning 64 percent of the vote against his Democratic foe.
But Shelby angered some Republicans last year for his stance in the special election that made Doug Jones the first Democratic senator from Alabama since 1992. Before that election, Shelby had slammed Jones’ opponent, Roy Moore, the wacked-out troglodyte and stalker of teenaged girls who had won the Republican primary run-off for the Senate. He said he could not support Moore and would cast his ballot as a write-in for another Republican whom he did not identify. Jones used Shelby’s public disavowel of Moore in robocalls to voters.
His public opposition to Moore got Shelby booed in abstentia at the candidate’s last rally in Midland on election eve. That anger has been building ever since Moore lost.
As Alex Isenstadt reports at Politico, Moore’s supporters and other party ultras want the state Republican Party’s executive committee to censure Shelby for not standing up for Moore, or at least for failing to follow the lead of some other Alabama Republican office-holders by keeping his mouth shut:
The move came after a pro-Moore outside group, Courageous Conservatives PAC, ran robocalls last month describing Shelby as a turncoat and calling on him to resign.
“Sen. Richard Shelby stabbed President Trump and conservatives in the back,” said one of the calls, which urged listeners to call his office and complain. “Tell Shelby you’ll never forget his disloyalty to President Trump and the Republican Party for his treasonous actions. Tell Shelby he’s betrayed his trust to Alabamians and he should resign his office. Call now.”
Isenstadt says the call for censure is “unlikely to gain traction in the state.” And even if it did, chances are Shelby won’t run again anyway since he will be 88 come the 2022 elections.
Even though the ultras’ attack almost surely will amount to a pinprick, if that, it is yet another indication of the rift in the party.
Usually, the Republicans are hard at work suppressing the vote of people who are likely to cast ballots for Democrats. However, as elsewhere in the nation, the party’s internecine fighting in Alabama could have Republicans suppressing their own turnout this November. That could give Democrats traction, if they are aggressive enough, to make some gains in the state legislature. They currently count only 40 of their number among the 140 legislators in the Alabama Senate and House.