Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and incumbent Sen. Luther Strange are now squaring off in a televised, statewide debate — Lincoln-Douglas style.
Moore and Strange are taking their cases to voters before Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff election in the race for Alabama’s U.S. Senate seat. Neither Strange nor Moore managed to get 50 percent of the vote during the special election in mid-August.
The winner of the runoff will challenge Democrat Doug Jones in the Dec. 12 general election.
Watch the Moore-Strange debate live here:
Former Gov. Robert Bentley, who resigned amid scandal, appointed Strange in February to the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions became U.S. attorney general.
Moore was removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to remove a statue of the Ten Commandments from the Supreme Court building.
Voters in the state put him back on the job.
He then was removed from the bench a second time when he told judges in his state, in an administrative order after same-sex “marriage” was created, that a previous order stood while the issue was reviewed in the state.
President Trump will head to Alabama to rally for Strange on Friday.
Looking forward to Friday night in the Great State of Alabama. I am supporting “Big” Luther Strange because he was so loyal & helpful to me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 20, 2017
Trump and the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, back Strange. Steve Bannon, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Chuck Norris are among those supporting Moore.
Sebastian Gorka, former deputy assistant to Trump, and Palin said Tuesday that they will speak at a rally in Montgomery for Moore.
“Judge Moore has shown he has what it takes to stand up to the out-of-touch political establishment,” Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, said in a statement announcing the rally. “The judge has proven he’s not afraid of a fight for what is right, and he’s ready to take on D.C.’s swamp monsters and help make America great again. We need more bold leaders like Judge Moore who will fight for all of us in the U.S. Senate.”
Gorka said he’s “proud to support Judge Roy Moore and rally conservatives in Alabama behind his candidacy.”
“The Washington establishment fears Judge Moore because they know he will oppose them. Judge Moore will be a steadfast supporter of President Trump and a strong ally in helping to drain the swamp and pass his America First agenda,” Gorka said.
Moore has been making campaign fodder out of Strange’s links to and support from other establishment Republicans. The GOP establishment has poured millions of dollars into Strange’s campaign, much from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s aligned Senate Leadership Fund.
A fundraising email from Moore’s campaign describes the “Washington elite” as being in “full panic mode”:
That’s why the McConnell-controlled Senate Leadership Fund dropped over $830,000 into Alabama to purchase another last-minute round of vicious attacks against me and my campaign.
McConnell’s cronies are planning to gobble up all the ad space — before, during and after the debate — and FLOOD it with vicious lies, smears and attacks against me, my wife and my family.
But rest assured — I won’t back down.
Moore’s political adviser for 25 years, Dean Young, warned in an interview Tuesday that “the establishment” should be concerned about “his best friend” winning the election.
Young said Moore won’t alter his convictions upon becoming Alabama’s senator, and that’s why “all the establishment are going crazy” over his candidacy.
“Because I’m going to tell you right now,” Young told the Washington Examiner. “When it comes to his beliefs, if they think for one second they can put some kind of moderate/liberal judge on the Supreme Court that believes in abortion, or believes that marriage is between two people of the same sex – you know, fake marriage – if they think that he would vote for that, he’s not going to budge.”
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