But seriously, Roy Moore?

Alabama is a deep-red state, and its elected officials should reflect that disposition. But Moore is no garden-variety outsider raring to drain the swamp. Nor is he a traditional conservative committed to keeping America safe for religion, guns, and low marginal-tax rates. Or rather, Moore may very well be both of those things, but he is also—and I want to put this as delicately as possible—a bit of a loon.

Most people, if they’ve heard of Moore at all, remember him vaguely as “the 10-Commandments judge.” This shorthand hardly does justice to the multi-year legal and PR spectacle Moore waged for the right to blend church and state. The flamboyantly pious Moore launched his career-making crusade in 1992, by placing a wooden plaque of the 10 Commandments in his Etowah County courtroom. The ensuing cultural and legal battles raised his profile and helped him get elected chief justice of the state supreme court in 2001. Shortly after being sworn in, he upped the culture-war ante by installing a massive granite monument of the 10 Commandments smack dab in the middle of the court building’s lobby. Lawsuits followed, and a federal judge ordered the monument—affectionately nicknamed The Rock—removed. Moore refused. Two years and multiple court rulings later (none in Moore’s favor), the conservative champion was officially booted from the bench by a judicial ethics panel.

By then, however, Moore was a hero among social conservatives, a fierce Christian warrior who put principles over power. He spent the next few years traveling the country with The Rock, speaking—preaching, really—to fellow warriors about the need to restore this nation to its Christian roots.

In 2012, Moore returned to the political arena, reclaiming his seat as Alabama’s chief justice. Before long, he was back on the national radar, this time for defying federal law regarding same-sex marriage. Now, Moore has never been a big fan of gay rights. He is on record as believing that “sodomy” should be illegal, drawing parallels between it and bestiality, and decreeing that homosexuality renders a person fundamentally unfit for parenthood. During his first run as chief justice, he used a 2002 custody case as an occasion to pen a fiery screed against “homosexual behavior,” denouncing it as “a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it.”

Small wonder that, in 2016, the chief justice directed Alabama probate judges to ignore the Supreme Court’s recent decision legalizing same-sex marriages and to continue enforcing the state’s ban on such unions by denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Once more, he was brought up on judicial-ethics charges and, in September of last year, was suspended from office. He resigned shortly thereafter to run for Senate.