Tom Baxter, a longtime political columnist in the South, grew up in
Montgomery, Alabama. Baxter sends out a themed mixtape every holiday
season to a liberal-leaning group of friends. This past December’s mix,
made in the wake of Donald Trump’s election, was titled “One Big
Alabama.” Its dark track list includes David Bowie’s “Sue (Or in a
Season of Crime),” which ends with the lyric, “Sue, I never dreamed / I’m
such a fool / Right from the start / You went with that clown.”

“ ‘One Big Alabama’ is suggestive of where I see the country going under Trump,” Baxter told me recently. The result of his home state’s
Republican primary runoff for the Senate, which took place yesterday,
seems to support his musical argument. Roy Moore, the Trump-styled
candidate and former chief justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court,
beat the incumbent, Luther Strange, despite Trump’s endorsement of
Strange and Moore’s own history of divisive and disqualifying behavior,
which includes commissioning a monument to the Ten Commandments to sit
outside the state judicial building—it was later removed, after its
placement was deemed unconstitutional—and, last year, flouting a federal
same-sex-marriage ruling. These actions, both of which got Moore removed
from his job, seemed to consolidate his support among voters who have
lately become some of Trump’s biggest fans. I witnessed this support at
a rally for Moore in Montgomery last Thursday, where Sarah Palin
and Sebastian Gorka made their
cases for the judge. Meanwhile, the Strange supporters I interviewed, who had
also voted for Trump, if less enthusiastically, worried about a local
theocracy led by Moore. Moore has said that “homosexual conduct should
be illegal,” and earlier this year he implied that the attacks of
September 11th were a punishment from God. When Keith Ellison became
the first Muslim congressman, in 2006, Moore wrote a column arguing that
he should not be allowed to take office, because “the Islamic faith
rejects our God.” (Moore will face the Democrat Doug Jones in the
general election, in December.)

Yesterday, I spoke to the state’s Republican Governor, Kay Ivey, before
the results of the runoff were clear. I wanted to hear what she made of
the recent political drama in Alabama, where, last November, a larger
percentage of citizens voted for Trump than in all but three
states.
Ivey was lieutenant governor at the time; she took her current office
five months ago, following the resignation of Robert Bentley, who
departed, in April, after pleading guilty to campaign-finance violations
allegedly connected to an extramarital affair he had with one of his
former staffers. “Our people are bouncing back, coming out of the dark
cloud that we were under,” she told me, pointing to job growth and to
her administration’s basic competence and candor. “So that’s very
refreshing.” (Ivey announced, in August, that she would run for governor
next year; she had been making fundraising calls before we spoke.)

Ivey used the word “refreshing” more than once in our conversation. She
also repeatedly used the phrase “it is what it is.” The first instance
came when I asked her about the state’s Senate race, about which she
wished to remain basically mum. (She had not endorsed either candidate
in the Republican runoff.) “It’s been competitive,” she said. “Money has
been spent. And it is what it is. It’ll be low turnout. All special
elections bring small turnout. But our people will vote today and decide
what they’ll decide.” The governor’s glum reference to low turnout
seemed like the early acceptance of a Moore win: Strange, observers
agreed, would likely need high turnout to prevail, given that his
supporters hadn’t shown the same passion as Moore’s.

The second time that the governor said “it is what it is” was when I
asked her about President Trump’s remarks in Huntsville, on Friday, in
which he expressed disgust for N.F.L. players who choose to kneel during
the national anthem as a form of nonviolent protest. (Trump told the
crowd, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these N.F.L. owners, when
somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the
field right now. He is fired. He’s fired!’ ”) Ivey would not take a
side. “In Alabama, we are patriotic people and we believe that you ought
to be patriotic and so forth and so on,” she told me. “So I’m sure that
encouragement by the President to show respect, you know, was received
well by some, but some had taken it adversely. So, it is what it
is.”

She went on to demur about football’s concussion problem. (The President
has repeatedly described the modern N.F.L. as insufficiently violent.)
“That’s not an issue I’m comfortable addressing right now,” she said. “I
haven’t talked to any athletes.” But, she added, “football is hugely
important. If you’re gonna be an Alabamian, you’ve got to choose either
Auburn or Alabama on game day.” (Ivey graduated from Auburn.)

The governor would not comment on the direction that the President has
driven the Republican Party, nor would she affirm that the state of the
Union is strong. “All of America can do better, with more folks back to
work, solving education needs, so our students are learning important
twenty-first century”—she trailed off a bit, before continuing—“jobs, so
they can be better prepared for their families. We’ve got a lot of
challenges.”

As Ivey ducked and weaved, I thought of an editorial I had read in an
Alabama paper by Guy V. Martin, a retired professor who taught Roy Moore
at the University of Alabama School of Law. Recalling his former student, Martin
wrote, “If Moore’s analysis of a case was tantamount to thinking 1 + 1 =
3, and his classmates reasoned otherwise, there was no backing down by
Moore.
The class was willing to fight to the death against illogic that no
legal mind but one in America would espouse.” Martin, who describes himself as a conservative, went on, “Moore
never won one argument, and the debates got ugly and personal.” The
professor was eventually forced, by Moore, to abandon the Socratic
method.

Before I got off the phone with Governor Ivey, I asked her what the
nation could learn from the example of Alabama. “It’s better to do what’s
right, not what’s wrong,” she said. “So always do what’s right.” This
morning, a senior adviser for Ivey informed me that the Governor “was
the first official to call Moore and congratulate him.”