BIRMINGHAM — The gubernatorial debate HOSTED by AL(dot)com’s Reckon, Wednesday at the Lyric Theatre, went about as expected.

There was a little spice though. All three of the four GOP candidates weighed in on the recent spate of student-teacher romances and Alabama’s age of consent. We also learned the candidates’ positions on raising the gas tax. This is notable as rumors abound that Gov. Kay Ivey may call a special session in a lame-duck period to hike the state fuel tax.

Ivey was, however, noticeably absent from Wednesday night’s debate thanks, in part, to an empty dais emblazoned with her name and helpfully featured on the debate stage.

Otherwise, it was a lot of the same. Evangelist Scott Dawson is going to do a performance audit when he is elected governor. State Sen. Bill Hightower (R-Mobile) wants to privatize the ALDOT. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle believes in having computers in our public school classrooms.

And of course, AL(dot)com columnist John Archibald is still a self-righteous left-winger. Archibald and HIS beliefs were on display Wednesday. By the way, he won a Pulitzer Prize if you haven’t heard.

As expected, Archibald began the debate focused like a laser on those issues Republican voters really care about: Roy Moore and Confederate monuments.

“We just come through this situation in which allegations were made against Roy Moore in the Senate race. He was not a teacher, of course. But in his 30s, he was alleged to have relationships with under-aged women,” Archibald said, transitioning from a question from co-moderator and Birmingham ABC 33/40 reporter Lauren Walsh about student-teacher sexual relationships.

The largely Republican audience was not pleased.

“Roy Moore’s not here!” one woman yelled.

Archibald continued, “And there were many people in and outside the party who said that they would support him no matter whether the accusations were true or not because politics was more important than that. What is your reaction to that and did you support Roy Moore?”

WARNING (and, if we are being serious, duh!) to Republicans (and this goes for the absent Kay Ivey as well): The pseudo-intellectual left in Alabama, emboldened by Doug Jones’ victory, is going to try to make 2017 Roy Moore a 2018 issue.

None of the candidates took the bait.

On Roy Moore, #alpolitics gubernatorial (R) candidates:

Scott Dawson: “I did vote for Roy Moore.”

Tommy Battle: “I ended up voting Republican.”

Bill Hightower: “I couldn’t vote for the other candidate”#alpolitics

— David Kumbroch WHNT (@davidknews) April 19, 2018

Archibald lobbed several out-of-touch-with-Republican-voter questions at the candidates. The kind that you might expect from someone with a warped liberal view of the world. How could a state where so many that practice Christianity allow for Alabama to be at the bottom of so many quality of life listicles? The subtext being, a religious population would recognize this and therefore elect those that would govern with progressive social impulses.

And of course, Confederate monuments.

“I feel like, at this point, this is a softball,” Archibald said, prefacing his question. “Gov. Ivey has recently staked her flag on the Confederate monuments issue. She said we shouldn’t try to erase our history, which I guess is easy politics. But do you think the monuments we have in Alabama accurately reflect the history in our state and all its people, and why or why not? And what can be done to portray our history in a way that includes all Alabamians?”

This was tied to Ivey touting the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 in a campaign ad, which seems to be perceived as an obstacle to some to want to rewrite the history book. However, none of the candidates took the bait on this one, either.

On Confederate monuments:

Hightower: Monuments are important. We don’t want them to be vandalized or destroyed. But we also don’t want to offend our brothers.

Battle: Whether you like the history or you don’t like it, the monuments reflect our history.

— Reckon (@reckonalabama) April 19, 2018

Somewhere on I-65, probably around Calera, there’s some woman stuck in traffic. She probably has a job in or around Birmingham. She and her family moved away from Birmingham to that part of Shelby County so that they could live in an affordable house with good quality of life services – schools, police and fire protection, etc.

It’s pushing 6 p.m. CT, and she wants to get home to be with her kids. But she is sitting in gridlock near the Shelby County Airport.

Meanwhile up in Jackson County, there’s another guy who over the past two decades has managed to work construction jobs on projects that have come to Tennessee Valley. Once those projects wrap up, he is laid off and has to live off of unemployment until the next job comes along. It isn’t a great lifestyle, but he and his family manage.

If the unemployment benefits run out, he might take something up in Chattanooga, or over in Huntsville – but the drive back and forth is onerous.

Down in the Toulminville neighborhood of Mobile, there is another man. He has a management job in retail across town in West Mobile. He’s not getting rich from it, but that paycheck goes a long way in his neighborhood.

He lives with the mother of his two children. They haven’t gotten married because such as the welfare system is constituted, a wedding band might mean a scaling back of those benefits.

All three of these Alabamians have one thing in common: They don’t care about the aging early 20th Century Daughters of the Confederacy monument sitting in front of their county courthouse. It is not important to them, nor is determining how to portray history in a more inclusive way. That chapter in their life closed when they completed Alabama history in the ninth grade.

They probably care even less about how Tommy Battle, Scott Dawson, and Bill Hightower voted in the 2017 U.S. Senate special election. Roy Moore is definitely yesterday’s news. He could absolutely show up again, and probably will. But most GOP voters have learned their lesson about Roy Moore.

Are John Archibald’s antics allegedly born out of a desire for a compassionate outcome and better leaders for Alabama? Or is it just to satisfy a craving to throw out a liberal hobbyhorse gotcha question, and perhaps lay some ground for any of these candidates’ possible future Democratic opponent?

My guess is the latter.

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and is the editor of Breitbart TV.