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(JD Crowe/JDCrowe@al.com)

Clete Wetli is a liberal political activist living in Huntsville and a regular contributor to AL.com. Email Clete at decaturclete@gmail.com or visit cletewetli. com.

When conservatives like George Will weigh in on an Alabama special Senate election by referring to it as a "Southern Gothic" experience, you know Alabama Republicans have once again embarrassed the state. Sadly, the top contenders in this race are simply the worst of what we've come to expect from Alabama politics. As they say, it's, "Deja vu all over again".



Roy Moore has been expelled from office twice and his foundation didn't file tax returns for two years running, Mo Brooks hasn't done a thing in Washington except obstruct legislation and now he's trying to exploit a shooting to increase his poll numbers, and "Big" Luther Strange got the job under extremely shady circumstances and now he's drowning in swamp cash that he's using to portray Brooks as Nancy Pelosi's prom date.

Alabama, just say no.

Look, no one's asking you to suddenly vote for socialism, but do you really buy that anyone, I mean anyone, is coming for your guns? Do you really think that posting the Ten Commandments anywhere is going to have some sort of magical impact on our government? Do you really think that gay marriage is ruining yours or that the fight over transgender bathrooms is somehow going to grow Alabama's economy?

So far, the only platform difference that these guys seem to be fighting over is who loves Trump more than Trump loves Trump. They've articulated no new ideas for growing the economy, no new ideas for lowering healthcare costs while ensuring coverage for the poor, and no new ideas for fixing the nation's infrastructure. Not one of them has said a thing about Russians meddling in our election process and they still act like illegal immigration is the nation's number one crisis.

Well, they have tried to out-Christian and out-Second Amendment each other. Still, not one of these guys has any policy ideas that will actually create jobs or help working class people.

In fact, these three haven't proposed much of anything that would address the real issues facing our nation. Of course, that's typical for Republicans as we've watched them talk about "repeal and replace" for seven years and forget to come up with an actual plan that works.

Maybe, someone ought to tell them that Alabama is in the middle of an actual opioid crisis and that maybe, just maybe, throwing more people in jail won't solve the problem.

Now, we all know Alabama Republicans love to vilify the federal government, which is why they rarely have any sort of plan when they get to Washington, but it might be worth considering that some federal programs actually benefit our state.

In fact, we probably wouldn't have some of the dire healthcare issues we have in the state if we had expanded Medicaid. Republicans in other states figured that one out. Well, in Alabama, we just couldn't get behind literally anything that had the word Obama in it. In fact, we even pretended that he single-handedly crafted Common Core school curriculum because the phrase "Obamacore" just made for good political attack ads.

Alabama, we need something drastically different if we want substantial and significant change. You're not going to get that with the political re-runs of Moore, Strange, or Brooks. It will be the same old senseless, hard line obstruction, followed by the same bi-annual embarrassing comments that make it on one news cycle on CNN that causes the rest of America to shake their heads.

Folks, it may do you some good to look at the Democrats because they've got great candidates with actual solutions. Republicans are just adding more critters to the swamp they call home.