I don’t believe that you live here, but you definitely have a grasp for what happened. Most of the electorate usually says, “oh you again, sigh” when it comes to him. However as we told someone who tried to sway us, he was not our first choice (for the very reasons that you stated), Brooks was. RM then became our only choice. If Brooks would have won, his illness would have forced him out, and we would still be where we are today.
We have someone here in New Jersey who may be a perfect parallel to Roy Moore. His name is Steve Lonegan, and he's a very conservative guy who has served in municipal office in the past (from the mid-1990s until 2007). He has run repeatedly in the GOP primaries for various higher offices, including Congress and the New Jersey governorship. He always came up short because his brand of conservative politics simply didn't attract a lot of appeal even among Republicans here.
He finally won the Republican primary in the 2013 U.S. Senate race, which was a special election to fill the seat that was vacated when Frank Lautenberg died. He won the GOP primary by a wide margin against a pretty weak field (a lot of other contenders stayed out of the race because of the off-cycle timing of the election), then lost to "incumbent" Cory Booker (who had been appointed to fill Lautenberg's seat until the special election) handily.
Lonegan is a great conservative spokesman but he simply doesn't have enough broad appeal to win at the state level.