Roy Moore is going to become the next Senator from Alabama. Here's the basic stuff. Alabama is a solidly Republican state, so whoever gets the GOP nomination (the runoff between Moore and Luther Strange is for the GOP nomination) gets the seat. Moore is an... unusual candidate. We normally distinguish between "quality" candidates and weak candidates based on elected experience, and focus on experience in state legislatures when looking at House elections, and either House or gubernatorial experience when focusing on Senate elections, just because that's sort of a natural progression. Moore, though, is a celebrity politician in Alabama from his tumultuous time on the Alabama Supreme Court. The thing is, a serious legal thinker in the Senate would be a good thing, in my opinion. OK, a serious thinker period would be a good thing. There aren't many of them. Mostly, though, Moore's schtick was defying the federal court order to take down a ten commandments monument that the federal courts said violated the establishment clause of the first amendment. Legal problems ensued for him, but that kind of thing goes over big with Alabama Republicans.
In other words, he was tea party before there was a tea party. His little ten commandments stunt wasn't actually about policy. It was about posturing. The tea party, and now the Freedom Caucus, have been focused, not on achieving any actual goals in Congress, but on grand spectacles.
What has Congress achieved, since the first unified GOP government in a decade? Jack fucking shit. Why? The party has been taken over by the will-to-spectacle. There is no better demonstration of that than Trump, but Roy Moore... He'll keep the show going. The will to spectacle.
Scholarly observation time. Those powerful interests who supposedly run everything? What are they getting for their money? Um... Uh...
Maybe they aren't that powerful... Amazing what happens when gooberism gets in the way...
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