In an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller, Alabama’s famous “Ten Commandments judge” Roy Moore reveals shocking new developments from his campaign for U.S. Senate.
The frontrunner in Alabama’s U.S. Senate race with 39 percent of the vote, Moore alleges that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to steal the election by letting Democrats vote in Alabama’s Republican primary.
“Well that’s exactly what their strategy is. That’s what they’re talking about. I wish the people of Alabama knew that. I wish the people of Alabama knew that McConnell and them were using the Democrats to come into the Republican primary,” Moore stated.
Patterned purportedly after Mississippi Republican Sen. Thad Cochran’s scheme, a Republican race can be decided by Democrats in open primary states like Alabama. While it doesn’t seem to be impacting Moore’s Tuesday win, such a scheme could yield results by Sept. 26.
But Moore is still confident, suggesting that if implemented, the strategy may backfire. “I’ll tell you the truth. There are a lot of Democrats that understand about the acknowledgement of God and understand what the Republican Party’s doing, and they may have a little trouble there too,” the candidate remarked.
“They’re trying to win any way they can, no matter how dirty and how underhanded the tactics. They’ve already put out campaign ads that were false. And they’ll continue to do things like this, because they cannot win on their own merits. They can only win by diminishing the other candidates,” Moore continued.
The judge, known for his strong faith and his unwillingness to budge on principle, is now in a runoff with Republican leadership-backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, the former Attorney General of Alabama.
“Strange was appointed by ex-Governor Bentley when he was supposed to be investigating Bentley, which proves he was never appointed to that job. People don’t want Washington determining who represents them in the Senate,” Moore said critically of his opponent.
Strange boasts an endorsement from President Trump, but with the number of White House “you’re fired” moments mounting, that endorsement may not carry the weight Strange believes it does.
Add to that Karl Rove’s millions, and Strange looks like a shoe-in on paper. But when other factors are taken into account — like that Moore mirrors the beliefs and core political values of a large percentage of the population — victory becomes less certain.
David and Goliath are not just a Bible story for Moore. In fact, Moore credits his belief in God for his miraculous surge against Strange. In spite of all the money (and a few discredited, but very negative ads from the Strange campaign), Moore is still in the lead.
“I could not fail to talk about the role of God in my public life. God is directing whatever I do, and when I depart from that, it doesn’t work,” Moore told The Daily Caller.
Moore bounced back from certain political death three separate times in his career as a public servant — objectively miraculous, even if observers happen to be atheists.
“It’s certainly providential in that way. I can’t imagine a race where I’m facing more outside forces than in this race. It seems like there’s a lot of people involved that shouldn’t be involved, Money is immense flowing against me. I’m fighting two super-PACS, one run by Karl Rove,” Moore explained.
“Over $20 million is being pledged against me in this runoff, and that’s unbelievable. We’ve raised a little under $500,000, and to compete with that during the primary was very difficult,” he noted.
Moore is unflinchingly optimistic about his chances.
“The people of Alabama do see the attempt to control their vote from outside of Alabama. I think they see it. I think they resent it. They should select the senator of their choice, not one chosen for them by money,” Moore stated.
“And I think they also look through these negative ads, and these ads have been proven to be completely false, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth for people to do this to you. And I do not run negative ads,” he continued.
Moore talks gay marriage, the Ten Commandments
Moore also opened up about his time as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, explaining his views on gay marriage and religious freedom, views for which he was wildly attacked by far-left groups like Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I look at the law and it just happens to conform to my faith. It conforms to history. It conforms to logic, so I stand up for marriage between a man and a woman,” explains Moore.
“Same-sex marriage is clearly against our history. No state in the Union had same-sex marriage. And, it certainly wasn’t in the jurisdiction of the federal government, as pointed out in Windsor v. U.S. (2013) where the Supreme Court said that the federal government didn’t have any role in marriage or divorce,” he continued.
“And yet, two years later, the Supreme Court issued the opinion in Obergefell” where the court claimed the power to make “special rights,” Moore remarked.
When it comes to the Ten Commandments, Moore claims there’s an unfair double standard, pointing to Texas and Kentucky as examples of the Supreme Court’s inconsistent rulings.
“So, we get into these things, like when they removed the Ten Commandments; it wasn’t really about the Ten Commandments, it was about the acknowledgement of God,” Moore explained.
“They took a case right after that in Kentucky and one in Texas. And in the Texas case, they found it could stay because it was historical and it was on the east side of the capitol in the least travelled section,” Moore said. “In Kentucky, they said, that’s a new display; it has to go.”
“This is just stupid stuff,” said the former judge. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that prohibits the acknowledgement of God.”
The reason elites hate Moore so much
The embattled candidate also advanced his own theories about why the establishment hates him so much, and his reasoning is pretty straightforward.
“I stand for God. I stand for the Constitution. I stand for the values that made this country great … and they don’t want me there because I’m not going to back down from it,” Moore explained.
“We’ve forgotten the meaning of those ideas … And, now it’s all about power,” Moore lamented. “Human nature is fallen, and the Constitution was put in there to restrain that human nature so that we would have better government.”
“The Senate perfectly exemplifies the problem in Washington. It’s happening in this race. They’re all out to win it. They don’t care about party. They don’t care about principles. They just want to win,” Moore remarked.
Violence, monuments, and getting offended
“In various instances of protests in our country people have been killed. I think those that kill or injure people should be punished according to the law, to the fullest extent possible … but to get offended at monuments and representations of our past is rather ridiculous, because those are reminders of where we’ve been, not where we want to go.”
“Monuments are representations of our history. Men who lived in history were good and they were bad, just like we are good and bad,” he continued.
Moore concluded his remarks on recent violence with his quote from Woodrow Wilson:
A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.