GOP "Family Values" Alabama Governor Resigns After Adulerous Affair Scandal

As I noted yesterday evening on Facebook, I lived in Alabama from 1977 through 1981 and since that time, the state has gone more or less insane. If one does the analysis, it becomes clear that the insanity tracks directly with the rise of the "Christian Right" as a political force in Alabama. Now former Alabama Governor, Robert Bentley represents the moral bankruptcy of this element of society.   Bentley campaigned as a "family values" Republican and, as seems to be always the case, the moral bankruptcy that defines the Christian Right has come into view as Bentley resigns from office to avoid felony convictions arising from Bentley's efforts to cover up his adulterous affair. If Alabama wants to prosper, the first thing it needs to do is vote all the "family values" Republicans out of office.  But I digress. Huffington Post looks at the much deserved fall of Robert Bentley.  Here are excerpts:

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) resigned from office Monday and pleaded guilty to two counts of violating campaign finance rules.

“I can no longer allow my family, my dear friends, my dedicated staff and cabinet to be subjected to consequences that my past actions have brought upon them,” he said at a Monday afternoon press conference.

Bentley’s resignation comes as the state’s House of Representatives begins hearings on his impeachment following allegations he abused his position as the state’s chief executive to cover up an affair with his former aide, Rebekah Caldwell Mason.

A plea deal worked out Monday required Bentley to resign, serve one year of probation, perform 100 hours of community service as a doctor and forfeit the more than $36,000 in his campaign account. It also required him to repay nearly $9,000 his campaign spent on Mason’s legal fees.

Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) was sworn in to office shortly after Bentley’s resignation. Ivey, 72, will be the state’s second-ever female governor following Democrat Lurleen Wallace, who served a 15-month term between 1967 and 1968. 

Members of Alabama’s GOP have been calling for Bentley to step down in the year since news broke of a salacious phone call caught on tape between the governor, 74, and Mason, 45. During the recorded conversation, Bentley ― dubbed the “luv gov” by political commentators and bloggers ― is heard professing his love for Mason and describes putting his hands on her breasts.

The governor’s ex-wife, Dianne Bentley, who filed for divorce in 2015 after 50 years of marriage, recorded the phone call in 2014 to determine if her then-husband was having an affair. Text messages Bentley sent Mason on his state-issued iPhone also appeared on a synced, state-issued iPad he gave to his wife.

Details pointing to a physical affair emerged in a damning report released Friday by Alabama’s state House Judiciary Committee. The report included accounts from the governor’s ex-wife and staff, who described suspicious text messages and encounters between Bentley and Mason.

The GOP and the Alabamafication of America

Likely soon to be removed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

As noted before, I once lived in Alabama many years ago - George Wallace, who I once met - was still governor at the time - and in the years since I moved away, first to Texas and then back to Virginia where my family had settled, things have gone steadily downhill on the political front in Alabama.  Not coincidental, in my view, the decline in Alabama has directly correlated to the rise in the power of the Christofascists and Republican Party in that state.  Now, an editorial at Al.com looks at how the Republican Party and its demented "conservative Christian" base are poised to take the nation down a similar road if they are not stopped.  Here are op-ed highlights:

Dear America,

Here's where Alabama currently stands: Our governor is under investigation. Our House speaker is under indictment. Our chief justice is suspended from duty and awaiting trial, again. We're one of the poorest states in the country, living off the federal dole, and we sit at or near the bottom of most empirical rankings of quality of life. Our leadership is non-existent and our government is on the brink of collapse.

But don't think for a minute that you're better than us. Donald Trump is the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, and you put him there. You're closer to Alabama than you care to think. 

Maybe you still think this Trump thing is a joke. I am here to assure you it is not.Perhaps you think voters cannot be so politically masochistic. You are wrong.

Don't hope for a minute that those behind the scenes — you know, the Establishment — can fix this game. It is beyond their control.  The Worst Case Scenario is not a possibility. It is a probability.

I have seen it. The saying "stuck on stupid" does not begin to explain our predicament. This is more like doing a handstand in a tar pit.

And this Thing that has corrupted my state, robbed us of common sense, poisoned our decency, and made us loathe our neighbors — it is contagious and you are at risk. Call it the Alabamafication of America.

Let me share with you what it has done to us.  Six years ago we elected Robert Bentley governor because most voters were under the impression that, despite lacking other qualifications for the job, he might be a good man. He was so gracious that he promised not to draw a paycheck unless Alabamians reached virtual full employment. Also, he had once been Bear Bryant's dermatologist.  Since then he has abandoned all sense — and his wife of 50 years.

There were lots of warning signs, first of which was, on inauguration day, he told a congregation in Montgomery that if you aren't Christian you couldn't be his spiritual brother or sister. During six years in office, that piety did not prevent him from groping a senior political advisor and later talking dirty to her on the phone while his soon-to-be-ex-wife recorded the conversation.

Before Bentley, there was Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, who stormed the Alabama Statehouse, deposing more than a century of Democratic control there. He pushed through what was, at the time, toughest-in-the-nation ethics laws and, according to prosecutors, broke them.  Not only is he accused of breaking the laws he passed, but since then he has argued in court that the laws he passed don't apply to him because the laws he passed are unconstitutional.

On Friday, the Judicial Inquiry Commission charged [Alabama Chief Justice Roy] Moore with abusing his authority by directing Alabama probate judges to disregard the United States Supreme Court's decision that same-sex marriage is a right under the Constitution. That action means Moore is suspended from the bench and will face a trial before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and possible removal from office.  For the second time. . . . Moore doesn't only believe God's coming back, but he thinks until then, the Almighty given him power of attorney over his affairs.  

The saddest thing is, this state has so much potential. In person — one-on-one — our people are decent and selfless. We make great music. We cook good food. We tell funny jokes. We love our children and would sacrifice everything for their futures.

But growing up in Alabama is like growing up in a broken home. We expect better of others instead of demanding better of ourselves. Rather than holding our elected officials to higher standards, we lower our expectations. We can't get over our insecurities, and we're suckers for anyone who comes along saying we're better than somebody else.

Maybe you think Alabama is a joke. I'm here to assure it's not.  If you're not careful, America, this could happen to you.

Alabama truly did not use to be this dysfunctional and corrupt.  The decline of the state directly tracts the increased influence of the godly folk and the GOP's willingness to pander to them and engage in shameless self-prostitution to them.  Now, it is happening nationwide.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley’s Exploding Sex Scandal

As I have noted before, it is almost ALWAYS the "family values" Republicans who find themselves being exposed (and deservedly so) in sex scandals.  Whether it is cheating on the spouse with same sex paramours or getting caught in gay sex scandals like former Virginia 2nd District Congressman Ed Schrock, it's always these who bloviate the most about so-called Christian and family values who prove themselves to be nothing more than despicable liars and hypocrites.  A case in point is viciously anti-gay Alabama GOP Governor Robert Bentley who finds himself in a sex scandal.  Having lived in Alabama years ago, I know first hand that other than perhaps Louisiana, no one does scandal better than Alabama.  The Washington Post looks at Bentley's hypocrisy and who the scandal assumed a life of its own.  Here are excerpts:

Anyone who has doubts about the importance of journalists in 2016 need be acquainted only with the reporting team at AL.com, the largest statewide news organization in Alabama. The group's reporters cracked open a scandal involving their governor's alleged infidelity last week and have been covering the unpredictable fallout aggressively ever since.

This scandal didn't come to them overnight; they've been hearing rumors of an affair between Gov. Robert Bentley (R) and his top political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, for months. The story finally broke open on March 22 when a fired top law enforcement official went on the record to AL.com's John Archibald about the alleged affair and offered proof. Faced with damning evidence of a taped phone conversation to a woman named Rebekah, Bentley has denied he had an affair, but few in a state accustomed to scandal believe him.

Alabama lawmakers, led by Republicans, are looking at ways to impeach him or set up a recall. An informal online AL.com poll found that 90 percent of about 30,000 respondents said Bentley should resign. Mason resigned Wednesday.

The story stretches far beyond sex, though. It's also connected to an ethics trial of the House speaker and a shadowy nonprofit that paid Mason's communications firm about $320,000 at the time of her resignation. As AL.com reporter Leada Gore said: "It's got every part of a scandal you could want."

[T]he speaker of the House, Mike Hubbard (R), is indicted on corruption charges. That has dragged on forever. So the governor has this old-time friend who was a legislator with him who he puts in charge of our state law enforcement agency. They get crossways -- which is an Alabama term you can use -- over the handling of an affidavit they are seeking related to the speaker's trial. The top cop says, 'I'm going to give this affidavit because I'm not going to lie to the grand jury about some of the things going on.' The governor supposedly told him not to. When Spencer Collier [the top cop] gave that affidavit, the governor fired him.

Then Spencer Collier became the first person willing to go on the record to say, 'Yes, there was an affair.' That's what happened last week that broke it all open.

Our state auditor has filed an ethics investigation, which in Alabama is extremely serious. There's also a state complaint saying he misused funds.

Mason has resigned her post. Her husband, who is a state employee -- of all things the director of the state faith-based initiative office -- is still there.

And then you get into all this crazy stuff. They all went to church together in Tuscaloosa. They've been asked to leave; he's no longer a deacon. We reported today her husband operated a separate communications company that was not on her ethics forms that received payments from the University of Alabama. And to make it even more of a tangled web, the chairman of the 501(c)(4) that the governor set up is the legal adviser to the board of trustees to the University of Alabama.   

Note the fact that the alleged adulteress' husband holds a "faith based" state office.   About the only thing more fun would be to find out that Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation is engaged in a torid lesbian affair. :)

Kim Davis and Robert Bentley - Poster Children for Chistofascist Hypocrisy

Time and time again the Christofascists who campaign against LGBT equality and same sex marriage in particular prove that it is they, not gays, who are the real threat to the "sanctity of marriage."  As the four times married Rowan County clerk faces a contempt of court hearing tomorrow, new bomb shells are underscoring her rank hypocrisy on the issue of "Biblical marriage."  U.S. News & World Reports has some of the salacious details.  Here are highlights:

The Kentucky county clerk facing potentially stiff penalties for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses has been married four times, raising questions of hypocrisy and selective application of the Bible to her life. 

The marriages are documented in court records obtained by U.S. News, which show that Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis divorced three times, first in 1994, then 2006 and again in 2008. 

She gave birth to twins five months after divorcing her first husband. They were fathered by her third husband but adopted by her second. Davis worked at the clerk's office at the time of each divorce and has since remarried.

Davis has described her desire to strictly adhere to the Bible in stark terms and thus far has shown no sign of bending to court orders on same-sex marriage. She said Tuesday she fears going to hell for violating "a central teaching" of the Bible if she complies with the orders.

Staver says “it’s not really relevant, it’s something that happened in her past” and that her conversion to Christianity about four years ago wiped her slate clean. “It’s something that’s not relevant to the issue at hand,” he says. “She was 180 degrees changed.”

Davis' selective application of the Bible is akin to that of Maggie Gallagher who seems to have never gotten over her unwed mother status in college.  As blogger friend Bob Felton notes:

It doesn’t need much imagination to understand how that string of bad marriages and relationships, and the complicated paternity of her children, might have had a debilitating effect upon her judgment, her self-esteem, her sense of self and worth.

And then she encounters a predatory cult that targets the insecure and the damaged, and fastens on to it like a lamprey — because her ‘church family’ and the love of an Invisible Friend are all that she has.

Maybe that’s how it happened, and maybe not; obviously, I speculate. It’s a familiar progression, however.

Gov. Robert Bentley and
Rebekah Caldwell Mason
(From HBTV.us)

Davis, however, isn't the only hypocrite when it comes to marriage.  The wife of anti-gay Robert Bentley, Governor of Alabama, has filed for divorce?  Why?  Because of her husband's affair with a staffer.  Like Davis, Bentley is a complete hypocrite.  Here are details from Legal Schnauzer:

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley engaged in an extramarital affair with his former communications director, leading First Lady Dianne Bentley to file for divorce last Friday after 50 years of marriage, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Rebekah Caldwell Mason, a married mother of three from Bentley's home base of Tuscaloosa, was the governor's mistress in an affair that sources say raises a number of possible legal issues--including use of the state jet and a state trooper's services for personal reasons that had nothing to do with Bentley's official role.

According to Dianne Bentley's divorce complaint, the couple separated in January 2015 because of a "complete incompatibility of temperament" and a "conflict of personalities which destroys the legitimate aims of matrimony." In fact, sources say, Gov. Bentley's affair with Mason destroyed the matrimonial bonds.

The 72-year-old Bentley, a Republican serving in his second term, repeatedly has touted his Christian faith and conservative "family values" to attract voters. He long has served as a deacon at First Baptist Church of Tuscaloosa. Bentley made national headlines in 2011 when, shortly after his inauguration, he said, ""Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister. And I want to be your brother."

Rebekah Caldwell Mason, sources say, quickly became more than just a communications director to Bentley. Their affair became so widely known that it diluted any moral authority the governor might have had.