Strikes me like Judge Roy Bean for President, but…
Forget Nader. Draft Moore.
How Democrats can win back the White House.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Sunday, Feb. 22, 2004, at 11:01 PM PT
Ralph Nader is running for president again. The media blitz is underway. So is the backlash. Many news outlets have been quoting a Jan. 29 editorial in The Nation urging Nader not to run. Chatterbox's own view is that if Nader wants to run, that's Nader's business; and if a teeny-tiny number of potential Kerry or Edwards voters pull the lever for Nader, that's their business. It's a free country.
The more urgent question Democrats need to ask is whether former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore will run for president. In a column posted Feb. 22 on The Nation's Web site, John Nichols points out that Nader isn't the potential third-party contender to watch in 2004:
Roy Moore, the Alabama jurist whose fight to display the Ten Commandments on state property drew national attention last year, is being courted by the right-wing Constitution Party as a potential presidential candidate. (The Constitution Party was on the ballot in 41 states in 2000, and retains a solid network of activist supporters nationwide.)
This is, of course, the very scenario Chatterbox fantasized about in his Jan. 19 column, "A Republican Nader?" The fundamentalist whom Chatterbox envisioned running for president (and stealing votes from Bush) was James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family. But Moore would be an even better rabble-rouser. Apparently his possible third-party candidacy is no mere fantasy on the left; at the very worst, it's a fantasy on the left and the right. John Fund wrote about it Feb. 2 in his online column for the Wall Street Journal editorial page:
Last Saturday, Mr. Moore was a featured speaker at the Christian Coalition's "Family and Freedom" rally in Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported he was "treated like a rock star, signing autographs and getting thunderous standing ovations." The week before that, Mr. Moore was the speaker at a dinner in Lancaster, Pa., sponsored by the Constitution Party, which has the third-largest number of registered voters in the U.S. ...During a question-and-answer period, Mr. Moore was asked if he would run for president. "Not right now," he said, noting he is still appealing his dismissal from office for violating a federal court's order to remove the monument from the Alabama Supreme Court building. "I have to wait till all these things are done to decide my future." His friends say he is undecided about whether to run for president or to wait two years and seek Alabama's governorship.
Bush's recess appointment of William H. Pryor to the 11th Circuit, though generally a disaster for liberals, is a great boon in one largely overlooked respect. It has very likely enraged Roy Moore. It was Pryor who, as Alabama's attorney general, helped give Moore the boot when Moore refused to remove his famous monument to the Ten Commandments from his courtroom. (Pryor's conservative detractors say Pryor did it to shore up support for his judgeship in the Senate.)
Posted by P6 at February 23, 2004 11:44 AM
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Comments
Chatterbox's own view is that if Nader wants to run, that's Nader's business; and if a teeny-tiny number of potential Kerry or Edwards voters pull the lever for Nader, that's their business. It's a free country.
That's pretty much my view as well.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 23, 2004 03:43 PM