Jan 28, 2018 5 min read

The victory of Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in the special election for the Alabama Senate seat last month was significant.

As a progressive Democrat, of course I am happy that there is an additional Democratic vote in the Senate, and that is especially unexpected coming from a state as reliably Republican as Alabama, which until this election had not elected a Democratic senator since Richard Shelby in 1992, and he was so conservative he became a Republican two years later. Shelby played an important role in Moore’s defeat; putting aside partisanship just before the election, he declared that he could not vote for Moore. When a respected party leader who knew Moore could not support him, enough Republicans followed his lead that Moore lost.

Of course, Democrats should not be lulled into thinking that if Alabama has gone Democratic, there will be a Democratic wave in 2018. Jones was not elected because Alabama suddenly became a leftist haven. He was elected because Moore had not only been accused by eight credible women of sexual misconduct, some of whom were minors at the time of the alleged incidents, but also because he had been kicked off the Alabama Supreme Court twice for failing to abide by judicial decisions. The first time was because he refused to remove a 10-ton sculpture of the Ten Commandments he had placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building, and the second was because he told judges in Alabama to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling on gay marriage. A judge, of all people, should understand the importance of obeying the law, even if you don’t agree with it.

The reason the election of Jones was important was that it indicated that there are some things more important than tribal loyalty. Democrats John Conyers and Al Franken resigned from their posts over accusations of sexual misconduct, while Republicans continued to support Moore and President Trump, both of whom faced more egregious accusations. Dahlia Lithwick made the argument in Slate that Democrats were claiming the moral high ground at the cost of electoral success. If one party has a high ethical bar and the other does not, unless the voters care about ethics, self-policing can be politically self-destructive.

The refusal of some Republicans in Alabama to vote for Moore suggests that there are limits to what Republicans will tolerate to enact their agenda. After Moore’s failure, in spite of Trump’s endorsement, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, grilled one of the inexperienced young nominees Trump had put forward to a lifetime appointment on the judiciary, demonstrating that ideological purity does not make up for a lack of competence in a job that matters.

Prior to Moore’s loss, Republicans had not challenged Trump’s nominees, even those rated “not competent” by the American Bar Association.

The recent decision by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah to retire, in spite of Trump’s efforts to get him to run again, open the way for Mitt Romney, one of the few Republicans to consistently oppose Trump, to run for his seat. These actions suggest there are Republicans who can separate the party’s short-term political gain from its principles.

Given Trump’s violation of many presidential norms, from conducting foreign policy via playground insults on Twitter, to his refusal to release his tax returns or disengage from his businesses, many Republicans have supported him not because they think he has the character to be president, but because he can help Republicans enact their agenda. The passage of the tax bill has finally given Republicans a concrete “win,” and this has encouraged the Republican leadership to fall in line. Republican strategist Grover Norquist once quipped that it doesn’t really matter who is president as long as he has “enough working digits to handle a pen,” which would explain the Republican leadership’s obsequious behavior toward a president most of them publicly disparaged before he became president.

One of the important questions a voter in a democracy faces is whether they are electing a person or a set of policies. While personal character may not matter so much in the short-term, over the long haul a voter cannot know all the topics a politician must consider, and their character may have an impact on how successful they are in getting their agenda enacted.

A similar question arises when a politician is forced to choose between his or her ideology and the needs of the party. Senators like Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, voted for the tax bill that clearly did not meet their ideological needs because they felt that failing to pass the bill to pass would damage the GOP.

So while some Democratic strategists argue that trying to adhere to relatively strict standards of behavior, which Trump might dismiss as “political correctness,” will hurt Democrats by removing some talented politicians like Franken, in the long run the victory of Jones demonstrates that the electorate does care about character at some level, and devolving to a strategy of using “whatever works” is short-sighted. Politicians and parties that prioritize short-term gains at the cost of their principles will eventually pay a cost.