Conservative's popularity may be problem for GOP

From today's Boston Globe:

As Republican strategists weigh the party's prospects for 2006 and 2008, they are increasingly worried about a political confrontation with Roy S. Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who became a hero to religious conservatives when he refused to follow a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state's judicial building.

Moore, a Republican who enjoys widespread support in his home state, is poised to run against a vulnerable Republican governor. If he wins, some party strategists speculate, he could defy a federal court order again by erecting a religious monument outside the Alabama state Capitol building. With the 2008 presidential race looming, President Bush would then face a no-win decision: either call out the National Guard to enforce a court order against a religious display on state grounds or allow a fellow born-again Christian to defy the courts.
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Polls indicate that Moore, a 58-year-old graduate of West Point, has a good shot at beating Governor Bob Riley in next year's Republican primary. Riley angered conservatives by signing the largest tax increase in Alabama history in an effort to get the state's fiscal house in order and make the tax code more progressive. ''There's enough people in Alabama clamoring for him [Moore] to run that I don't see that he has much choice," said Baptist minister Rick Scarborough, who chairs the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration.

Meanwhile, the former state chief justice is bolstering his national standing. He has filed amicus curiae briefs in two Supreme Court cases expected to be decided this month that will determine whether displays of the Ten Commandments on public grounds in Texas and Kentucky violate the US Constitution.

On Capitol Hill, Moore is lobbying for legislation in Congress to strip federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over any challenges to government agencies or officials that acknowledge ''God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

Once upon a time I used to cheerlead the wackos that keep taking the Republicans further and further to the right, thinking that sane Americans would finally say "enough" and put some grown-ups with good reality testing back in charge. Alas, every time it happens, the Corporate Media Hos confer legitimacy upon patently illogical propositions, lies or whatever else the right spews, and the Dems move the "middle" a little further away from the party's roots. As a result, those oh-so-centrist Dems Ben Nelson, Evan Bayh and Unca Joe Lieberman end up getting great ink when they consent to put ideological hacks like Owens, Brown and Pryor on the Bench.

So, I'm not as excited as others might be about watching Moore put the Boy King's knickers in a twist on this. First, I've no doubt that administration apologists currently holding the tee vee airwaves captive would give our oh-so-popular wartime preznit a way out--that is, if they deigned to deem it to be newsworthy in the first place. Second, the rest of the article makes plain what an authoritarian and plainly Machiavellian character Moore is. This guy is a provocative, grandiose opportunist, and putting him in charge of anything, anywhere is a threat to the country's principles.