Roy Moore is what happens when righties buy into the tribalist fervor that characterizes our times

John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist crystallizes just what is wrong with Moore's track record as a supposed champion of religious liberty:

As a result of these battles [the Ten Commandments monument and the defiance of Hodges v. Obergfell], Moore became something a martyr to some social conservatives, who mistakenly believed he was standing athwart history in the name of religious freedom, or moral clarity, or something. Too many conservatives conflated Moore’s crusade against the federal judiciary with the persecution that Christian cake bakers, florists, and pro-life groups now face at the hands of progressive state governments in California and elsewhere.

But they’re not the same thing. Moore’s fundamental claim that a state supreme court can ignore a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court is anything but conservative. That question was settled by the Civil War and the constitutional amendments that followed in its wake, and no one who claims to be a conservative would argue otherwise.

But Moore’s moral grandstanding about the Ten Commandments monument and the Obergefell ruling weren’t just wrong as matters of law or history, they were fundamentally anti-American: Moore elevated himself, on more than one occasion, above the law. This is the sort of thing conservatives rightly accused former President Barack Obama of doing with his “pen and phone” approach to governing by executive fiat.

The excuse that Moore was on “our side” of the culture wars should never have been enough to forgive this behavior. That it was enough—and among some die-hard supporters, still might be—to elect Moore as the GOP candidate in Alabama’s special election next month is a sign of just how dysfunctional and deleterious our political tribalism has become.

It can be hard, here in post-America where every last cultural institution has gone completely off the rails, for three-pillar conservatives to avoid hair-trigger responses to the glaringly egregious assaults on civilization. It can, in certain cases, require nerves of steel. But once the underlying principles have been jettisoned for defending the supposed brand's viability in the marketplace, the whole conservative exercise becomes pointless.

It's heartening to see that even tribalist pseudo-conservatives are now strongly encouraging Moore to consider dropping out. The cleanup effort is going to be plenty daunting as it is.