I would like to first say that I am not the biggest fan of Alabama Congresswoman Martha Roby. As a constituent, I have issues with her record in Congress. For example, she has a pitiful fiscal voting record and is widely seen as Alabama’s least conservative Republican member of Congress. Roby is also no fan of civil liberties and has spent her career in Congress protecting the surveillance state. These are among the many reasons that the various conservative organization’s scorecards make it clear she is far more moderate than the constituents of her safe Republican district (Roby has a 57% lifetime score from FreedomWorks).
However, the recent attacks on Roby from Trump supporting Alabamians has reached a new low of ridiculousness. Trump supporters, led by Roby’s primary challenger Becky Gerritson, are angry that the Congresswoman un-endorsed Trump following the release of the sexually explicit Access Hollywood tape. They are vowing to write-in Gerritson on November 8th.
While I certainly would be thrilled to see fair criticism of Roby, this movement is not informed and has nothing to do with Roby’s record. The criticism is not that the Congresswoman, who was originally endorsed by Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, has a more liberal voting record than establishment types like Kevin McCarthy. It is that she was honest with them about her support for Trump. In fact, the voters of District 2 seemed quite pleased with the congresswoman’s work just 8 months ago when she won 66% of the vote in the Republican primary. If you think that District 2 is simply a moderate district and these angry Trump supporters are in the minority, I would remind you that Donald Trump won upwards of 45% of the District 2 vote in that same primary at a point when it was still a 5 person race. If these critics were so angry at the job Roby had done, it appears that they were simply too ill informed to vote for her Trump-esque challenger who only received 27.85% of the vote.
The Garritson for Write-In crowd is angry that Roby is refusing to support the Republican nominee, and I get that. In their eyes, refusal to support the Republican nominee is support for the Democrat. It would be a credible and potentially respectable position if they were not planning to do the exact same thing to Roby that they are accusing her of doing to Trump. Roby faces a Democratic challenger, and if enough District 2 Republicans refuse to vote for her, she will lose a safe Republican seat in a year that already looks like it is on track to be a banner year for Democrats.
If Roby is a Clinton supporter because of her un-endorsement of Donald Trump, then those who plan to write-in a candidate might as well be knocking on doors for her liberal challenger. I think non-support of a Republican should never be assumed to be support for the Democrat, but the angry mob in Houston County Alabama seems to disagree. All I can do is point out their hypocrisy. Roby has not endorsed Clinton and has made it clear on multiple occasions that she does not support her. Trump supporting “conservatives”, most of whom it appears did not even care enough to research their options for the District 1 seat, need to grow up.
All I want to say is would we not be in glee if Trump had run as a Democrat because that is the party that is truly broken and is the biggest threat to the economic and national security threat the country faces.