In the 1990 contest for governor of Minnesota, Republican nominee Jon Grunseth was accused of trying to get two young teenage girls to go skinny dipping with him nine years prior. He denied the accusations. Fellow Republican Arne Carlson entered the race as a write-in candidate, and Republicans abandoned Grunseth in favor of Carlson, who ultimately won the election and become the next governor of Minnesota.
That sort of situation is exactly what the write-in line is for. There are write-in candidates in the Alabama contest this year. A Republican write-in could win; Alabama is more red than Minnesota was in 1990. So far, however, there has not been a concerted effort to elevate any of them in an organized campaign to win the election. There are various reasons for that, but ultimately they all come down to the fact that Republicans in Alabama still support Roy Moore.
So when people say that they don’t like what Moore did, but they would have to vote for him to beat the Democrat, that is a hollow excuse. There are alternative options for Republicans, but they are choosing not to exercise them. They do not get to avoid responsibility for that.
