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Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore displays a gun during a campaign rally held in support of his Senate candidacy on Monday, Sept. 25, 2017, at Oak Hollow Farm in Fairhope, Ala. (CBS News)

There's part of me that really wants to vote for Roy Moore in December, just to throw another gallon of gas on the pyre and watch it burn.

Let's face it: @realDonaldTrump didn't endorse Luther Strange because he was confused or misled. Mitch McConnell's Senate Leadership Fund didn't throw millions of dollars away because they didn't know what the alternative was.

They threw themselves behind Strange because they read what's written on the wall: With Roy Moore as the GOP nominee, Democrats will win this Alabama election, even if Doug Jones loses it.

National Democrats, that is.

Since it became clear Moore would beat Strange in the GOP runoff, national media have mined his career for clips of his most outrageous utterances. And those things aren't hard to find.

Moore saying 9-11 was God's punishment of America? Check.

Moore saying homosexuality should be a crime? Got it.

Moore arguing that a duly elected United State congressman should be barred from office for being a Muslim who follows a false religion ? Here you go.

Moore insisting that First Amendment protections apply only to Christians? Bingo.

Moore telling a crowd that if you aren't armed, you're disobeying God? Here it is.

Moore saying that pre-school is a Nazi-like plot to indoctrinate children? I have to admit, I totally forgot about this one, but yeah, it happened.

Somehow they missed how Moore fought an amendment to remove Jim Crow language from the Alabama Constitution, but don't worry. It's there and they'll find it soon enough.

But seasoned Alabama political journalists know those national kin are trying too hard. You don't have to spend days on days watching old clips and reading through archives to find this stuff. Just follow Ol' Roy around for a bit and he'll oblige. This is a politician who sees every cable TV booking as an opportunity to spread his message.

If elected, Moore will be on TV every day somebody lets him on there, and with cable news now fancying itself as ESPN for politics, those networks will fight each other to put him on air.

Then they'll follow up by asking every sane Republican what they think of Moore: "Sir, do you agree with Roy Moore that African-Americans are the cursed descendants of Ham and that police shootings are God's will?"

Moore didn't really say that and I made it up, but you weren't completely sure, were you?

No Republican official will know for sure, either, what will come out of Moore's mouth next. But they know that it will embarrass them, and they know that it will push the national GOP into the margins and away from electability in swing states. It's already happening.

Trump was bad enough for the GOP. Just wait until you meet "the party of Donald Trump and Roy Moore."

And trust me, @realDonaldTrump isn't going to enjoy sharing the spotlight. Whatever you say about Donald Trump, he hasn't tacitly endorsed the execution of gay people, unlike Moore.

That one I didn't make up.

You will hear strategists and spokespeople rationalizing Moore. They'll argue that the GOP majority in the Senate is worth it. They'll never concede that a Democrat could be better for them -- better for everybody, better for anybody -- than a Republican.

But they know. They have a nightmare unfolding in Alabama, and it's tempting to give what they claim so badly to want.

But there's a price to be paid, and as usual, it's a price to be paid by Alabama. Can anyone make a rational argument that Moore will be good for this state? How do we recruit business with a homophobic authoritarian lawless theocrat as our ambassador? Heck, how does the Crimson Tide recruit football players?

Do you hear that silence? That's Mississippi keeping its head down and mouth shut as Alabama overtakes that state as the prime example of political failure.

We can go down that road if we want, or we can consider that there's an alternative.

Joe Biden was in Birmingham today stumping for Doug Jones. Here are some of the more notable things he said. Posted by Reckon by AL.com on Tuesday, October 3, 2017

On Tuesday I went down to the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Center to see Jones' first real campaign rally as the Democratic nominee. More than a 1,000 people showed up to that rally. Several I spoke with had traveled from all corners of the state. The line snaked around the block and when it moved it packed a ballroom there.

Just about every time in the last decade when I've seen this many Alabama Democrats in one place, it's had all the character of a funeral where the decedent left no will -- lots of angry, suspicious relatives ready to fight each other over a dead person's stuff.

But this time, it was different. There was genuine excitement and real energy. And hope.

This time the body had a pulse.

When Joe Biden took the stage, the crowd was ecstatic. The former vice president argued that they don't have to wait for extremists to defeat themselves, and Alabama doesn't have to sacrifice its future to change our national politics.

"Although when (Jones) wins this race it will send ripples throughout the country -- I want to be clear -- don't do it for that reason," Biden said. "Do it for Alabama."

Biden is right about the latter, but self-interest doesn't have to be our only motive.

We have the chance to show the nation that not everyone here supports the likes of Moore. We have an opportunity to show the Alabamafication of America can be something very different, even something good.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. You can follow his work on Facebook through Reckon by AL.com.