There’s a hypothesis I can’t shake after years of observations.
Alabama Republicans are getting bad at politics.
So far, that hasn’t threatened their hegemony. The party controls all state offices; holds seven of the state’s nine congressional seats and enjoys supermajorities in the Alabama Legislature.
For that, the GOP can thank an opposition that for the better part of 16 years has been weak, underfunded and divided. It’s like watching a high school baseball team take the field against a sixth-grade rec squad whose coaches are screaming at each other.
No need for brilliant skill. Swing the bat and jog the bases while the ball rolls past the fielders and toward the outfield fence.
But playing weak opponents can weaken your grasp of the fundamentals. And two developments this month felt like unforced errors.
A pair of Republican congressmen — Gary Palmer of Hoover and Robert Aderholt of Haleyville — went out of their way to announce their support of a federal bill that would ban transgender women from joining the Daughters of the American Revolution.
If your reaction to that sentence was “huh?” well, it was mine too. I hate to describe what’s happening, because it implies there’s a good-faith disagreement that requires the mediation of Congress. There isn’t. It’s just another instance of bigots demanding the imposition of bigotry.
Here’s a summary. Leaders of the Daughters of the American Revolution said in 2023 that they would welcome transgender people who meet their membership requirements. As is the now-tedious inevitability, a few gonad obsessives lost their minds. Earlier this month, about 60% of the delegates at a DAR conference (called a “Continental Congress”) voted to keep the policy. The people who lost now want Congress to intervene.
Good for the DAR for preserving common decency. There is zero issue with transgender people being in the organization. A responsible official might turn away from the hate and toward issues like grocery prices, healthcare costs and the quality of education.
Yet Palmer and Aderholt consider this issue just as important as those, if not more so. They think this niche obsession is a winner. Maybe with Alabama’s identity-obsessed, lickspittle conservative media. The rest of us may properly scratch our heads.
Then there’s Tommy Tuberville’s stampede toward data centers.
The Republican gubernatorial nominee told Alabama sheriffs that he opposed statewide moratoriums on data centers; that concerns about their community impacts were “bullcrap” and that China drove opposition to them. He stuck with this argument (and the ludicrous Chinese connection) in later comments to a Huntsville TV station.
Tuberville was taking his cues from President Donald Trump, who attacked New York for creating a statewide moratorium on data centers. The U.S. senator has always played Smithers to Trump’s Burns, so that’s not surprising.
But it’s one thing for Tuberville to make the case for data centers in his read-the-assignment-minutes-before-class kind of way. Politics 101 demands that you acknowledge the widespread concerns the projects are sparking in Alabama, over power consumption and environmental effects.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of Alabama communities that have seen strong local opposition to data centers or moved to ban them: Bessemer. Pinson. Wilsonville. Cullman. Birmingham. Mobile. Leeds. Homewood. Fairfield. Nationwide, more Americans oppose having data centers in their neighborhoods than support them.
This is not manipulation by a foreign government. These are citizens in an ostensible democracy voicing their concerns. A sensible politician would not antagonize people packing town halls and organizing against data centers.
Yet Tuberville feels comfortable not only dismissing the critics, but impugning their motives. Even in a place like Cullman, not known for green politics or liberal ideas. If the Republican gubernatorial nominee thinks data centers are the future, he has to acknowledge the concerns. You won’t make data center opponents more comfortable with the facilities by calling them stooges.
In the DAR example, we have a willful ignorance of Alabama’s needs. In data centers, we have an open opposition to them. And in both, there’s a seeming disconnect between the politicians and the voters.
But this isn’t the only example from Team Red. There was the odd move to rename the Gulf of Mexico 15 months after Trump likely forgot that he ever raised the issue. Or responding to outrage over Alabama’s high power bills by kneecapping the state’s electric regulatory commission. Or the all-Republican Supreme Court confidently ending IVF treatments in the state without considering the political consequences. In each case, you see a party paying more attention to donors or its weird obsessions than what’s happening beyond them.
I doubt this will lead to any profound change in November. The Republicans’ institutional advantages are significant. The Democrats are playing from behind.
Yet the state GOP keeps committing errors in a year where the national trends are against them. And when the opposition might be showing signs of life.
It may not be enough to deny Republicans victory. But it’s keeping Democrats in the game. And making the score closer than the GOP might prefer.
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