GRAND BAY — At a campaign event during a swing through his home congressional district on Saturday, U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Fairhope) seemed to be taking a more aggressive tack in his quest to become Alabama’s next U.S. Senator.
With only 45 days left until Republicans head to the polls to select who they prefer to face Sen. Doug Jones (D-Mountain Brook) in the general election, Byrne addressed the Grand Farms Subdivision Action Group’s “INFORMED and INVOLVED Candidates Forum” at a venue in south Mobile County, just a stone’s throw from the Alabama-Mississippi state line.
Before an audience of more than 50 or so, Byrne honed in on values as a line of attack against Democrats, declaring them not to believe in God and as seeking to replace God with government.
“This attack on President Trump is an attack on you and me,” he said. “Let’s make that clear. They don’t believe what you and I believe. It’s a fundamental breakdown in values. Policies are one thing. It’s the values that are at issue here. They don’t believe in God. That is at the root of the founding of the United States of America. They want to take God out of our life. They don’t want you and I to freely exercise our religion. We have to be willing to fight back against that. They don’t believe what the Constitution says what it says and nothing else. They keep adding things to it.”
“The Second Amendment says what it says what it says what it says, right? You have the right to bear arms, period, right? They want to take that right away from us. We have to fight against that. They want to take our right to freely exercise our religion in our everyday life. They want to say you can do whatever you want to in that church building over there. But when you walk outside of it, you can’t act out your faith. We have to stand up and fight against that. They have crazy ideas about what the federal government should do. When you take God out of the center of everything, you put government in the center of everything.”
Byrne cited Democrats’ push for the Green New Deal and Medicare for All as evidence of how an effort by the Democratic Party to put government at the center of everything.
He also took time to get a shot in at Jones, his general election opponent should he win the Republican senatorial nomination, and another in former Auburn head football coach Tommy Tuberville, one of his opponents in the March 3 GOP senatorial primary.
“I look at our United States Senator who is up this year in Doug Jones,” Byrne said. “He does not believe what you and I believe and is sure not going to fight for it. I want a senator who will go up to Washington believing what you and I believe, understanding the issues and will fight for them, who will wake up every day saying I’m the Senator from and for the state of Alabama. I didn’t just show up here yesterday. My family has been here for six generations. I didn’t move here from Florida three months ago, get a driver’s license and say, ‘I want to be your senator.’ We need people who understand who we are, who care about who we are and will fight for the stuff we believe in. I’m that fighter.”
@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University, the editor of Breitbart TV and host of “The Jeff Poor Show” from 2-5 p.m. on WVNN in Huntsville.
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