The race for the Republican nomination for governor in the state of Alabama is lopsided by all measures in favor of Bob Riley over Roy "The Ten Commandments Judge" Moore.  The very attribute that made him famous as a judge, his religious zeal, has turned out to be his gubernatorial Achilles heel.

Roy Moore the candidate is actually a pretty good option.  He is stridently opposed to new taxes.  He has pledged to rescind the annual property appraisals that Riley implemented in favor of the old quadrennial system.  Moore opposes illegal immigration, while Riley pretends to oppose it.  He wants to impose term limits on state legislators and eliminate their double dipping.  Moore claims he will return control of education to the parents, something I strongly believe in, although I am not sure his specific plans for doing so.

I would never vote against someone because of their religion (or lack thereof), but I will vote against someone, who might otherwise be a good candidate, because I believe that they will try to impose their religion on me.  I need to be convinced that Moore will not seek to inject his religious beliefs into my life.  That is probably all it would take to push me over the line and vote to support him.

I don’t expect Moore to win the primary, but I think it will be much closer than Riley would like.  With a gay marriage amendment on the ballot the religious fundamentalists will be out in force and they will likely vote for Moore.  Many of those voters are not the “likely voters” that polls identify; they are being cajoled by their churches to hit the polls.

Related content:

This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 10:53 am and is filed under Alabama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.