Odds for Doug Jones Just Went Up in Alabama

Marine Col. Lee Busby (Ret.) has launched a full-on write-in campaign for the Senate seat in Alabama, hoping to stop Roy Moore from ever getting to Washington. Don't know what his candidacy looks like on the ground in Alabama -- local Alabama coverage at the moment is mainly reprints and replays of national political media), but he's already nationally famous. He did an appearance on Morning Joe a couple of days ago, an interview on NPR this morning, and he's been written up in the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, RealClearPolitics, and probably elsewhere.

Fox News. 

Busby is a conservative Republican. He says he'd vote for the Senate tax bill even though he knows he'll never have that opportunity (because it'll be done with by the time there's a new Alabama senator sworn in). Busby has no formal campaign structure or even a working website "as of Monday morning" (WashingtonPost). He told the Post he is "counting on social media to spread the word" (and here we are, reporting for duty).

According to James LaPorta, "Busby has been the CEO of his own business and worked as a defense consultant and investment banker. At the same time, Busby has been honoring fallen Marines with sculptures" (like the one in the foreground of the photo to the left).

That's an admirable thing to do.

Most interesting: Busby not only voted for Trump. He was current White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's vice chief of staff in Iraq.

Policy positions (other than support for the Trump tax law)? Against abortion (check!). Repeal Obamacare (check!). Voted for John Kasich in the 2016 Republican presidential primary (hmmm). But that's it. That's all the policy issues Busby has so far shared with the public, though there's this:

With the Washington Post, he used military strategy to explain his politics: "The left flank and the right flank are heavily guarded. I think that gives you an opportunity to run straight up the middle.” On the basis of that, the Post suggested he was therefore "centrist."

That may be correct. Despite his doctrinaire right wing positions on abortion and monetary policy, he attended a Doug Jones fundraiser early on, to check out the Democrat in the race (so he's open-minded or at least curious), but decided Jones was not "appealing." Meanwhile -- and perhaps the explanation for why he attended that Democratic fundraiser -- Busby has been unimpressed with Roy Moore, a zero in Busby's view, even without all the sexual accusations.

So what's a cigar-chomping Marine to do if both the Republican and the Democrat fail to measure up?