A month ago, we made a case here that the Democrats should make a real run for the Senate seat in Alabama vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Republican candidate Roy Moore, though popular in the state, embodied so many un-democratic, un-American beliefs that disqualified him for office that that Democrats’ had a baseline moral obligation to oppose him. There were also urgent political considerations as well: Moore would help push the GOP even further to the right, not simply into deeper conservatism, but to a place of theocratic radicalism and clearly un-Constitutional aims.
To briefly review some of this man’s greatest hits: Moore argued that Representative Keith Ellison should not be allowed into Congress simply because he’s Muslim, and has also argued, against all facts and common sense, that Sharia law has been imposed in the states of Illinois and Indiana. As chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, he installed a massive sculpture of the Ten Commandments at his courthouse, and then was removed from office when he flouted an order to remove it. After a political comeback and return to his position as chief justice several years later, he was suspended for disobeying a federal court when he directed other state judges to continue enforcing a state ban on same-sex marriage. And as for his proposals for what he’d do if elected, they run like usual right-wing fare: tax ideas that would penalize the poor and benefit the wealthy, elimination of Obamacare, more persecution of non-straight members of the military.
Matthew Yglesias has written a pretty decisive article that hits on some of the points we had made, plus a bunch of additional important ones. First, he outlines the benefits to the Democrats from engaging more fully in this race: not only would they be taking a stand against retrograde ideas and arguing for their own principles, which is good for the party’s identity generally, it would also help build the Democrats’ strength in Alabama over the longer term even if Democratic candidate Doug Jones loses. Yglesias also makes the very crucial point that Democratic focus on this election will force the Republicans to place energy and resources in it as well, which will increase the degree to which the GOP becomes more generally associated with Moore’s hideousness.
He also points out that Doug Jones is a strong candidate with a legitimate chance at winning this race. As a U.S. attorney, Jones headed up the prosecution of Eric Rudolph, the domestic terrorist who bombed the Atlanta Olympics, abortion clinics, and a gay bar. Jones also prosecuted and gained the convictions of KKK members involved in the murder of four African-American girls in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Yglesias’ article had persuaded us that the case for running hard against Moore was already airtight. But then the Washington Post broke its story about pedophilia allegations against Moore, and what had been merely an airtight case became an overwhelming moral and political necessity for the Democratic Party. Please read the Washington Post report. To The Hot Screen, it seems entirely credible and well-documented. Based on recent interviews with these women, the article recounts Moore’s dating of four teenage girls back in the 1970’s. The details are internally consistent, deeply creepy, and morally repugnant. One of the women, who was 14 at the time, describes sexual contact with Moore, who was 32 at the time. Such contact would have been a crime in Alabama in the 1970's, and would be a crime now. Moore denies all the allegations, and has no plans to step aside from the race.
It’s not just that the Post has provided strong evidence that Moore committed sex crimes — which hideously explode his pretensions to upright Christian behavior and any possible claims to hold political office in one grotesque swoop — but that the Republican Party as a whole has now implicated itself in his moral turpitude by its foundering response to the allegations. While a few senators have withdrawn their endorsements of Moore, a few more have condemned him as unfit for office, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee has withdrawn from its joint fundraising agreement with the campaign, the larger Republican establishment has hedged its bets. Many GOP politicians say that Moore should step aside if the allegations are true — but what standard of proof would they ever accept, given that they’ve largely signed on to Donald Trump’s fiction that the media is simply fake news? And the statute of limitations has run out on Moore’s alleged crimes, so this will never be resolved in court.
It is no surprise, given the numerous accusations of sexual harassment and worse against Donald Trump, that the White House qualified its statement on Moore by saying that “Like most Americans the president believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a person’s life,” even as it said that “Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside” if the allegations are true.
But it only goes downhill for the GOP from here. Where approval or condemnation of Moore’s alleged behavior really counts, in Alabama, prominent members of the state Republican Party have issued insane and abhorrent defenses of Moore. State Auditor Jim Zeigler attempted to defend the candidate by citing, of all things, the story of Mary and Joseph. As in, the Bible story. “Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter," said Zeigler. "They became the parents of Jesus.” Now, I’ve seen some smart progressives go full Bible exegesis in attempting to rebut Zeigler’s point, and I don’t begrudge them this approach (and yes, the fact that Zeigler is unfamiliar with the immaculate conception is odd). But I don’t think we need to get into the theological weeds about the nature of the relationship between Jesus’ parents to say that when someone tries to defend pedophilia because it’s supposedly in the Bible, you have launched your political party into an embrace of such gross stupidity, moral grotesquerie, and universally-condemned practices that no further discussion is necessary.
Then there are two county chairmen who say that they’d support Moore even if the allegations are true. Let’s quote the Toronto Star at length here to get the full impact of their positions, in their own words:
Five Republican county chairmen told the Star they believed the allegations were false. One of them, moreover, said he would vote for Moore even if there were proof Moore had abused a girl.
“I would vote for Judge Moore because I wouldn’t want to vote for Doug,” said Bibb County chairman Jerry Pow. “I’m not saying I support what he did.”
Covington County chairman William Blocker also said he’d consider voting for Moore even if hard evidence of sexual abuse emerged.
“There is no option to support Doug Jones, the Democratic nominee. When you do that, you are supporting the entire Democrat party,” he said.
Geneva County chairman Riley Seibenhener said he did not think Moore should withdraw even if the allegations were true.
“Other than being with an underage person — he didn’t really force himself,” Seibenhener said. “I know that’s bad enough, but I don’t know. If he withdraws, it’s five weeks to the election . . . that would concede it to the Democrat.”
“It was 40 years ago,” said Marion County chairman David Hall. “I really don’t see the relevance of it. He was 32. She was supposedly 14.” He added, incorrectly, “She’s not saying that anything happened other than they kissed.”
“He didn’t really force himself.” Let that sink in for a bit. Ultimately, apart from playing the fake news angle against the Washington Post and other reports, this is the logic that the GOP as a whole would have us embrace: That no crime against women is ever possible. That women always lie. That a grown man could not possibly have forced himself on an underage girl. This isn’t really logic, though, but an ideology of misogyny, hate, and power.
Under Alabama election rules, it's too late for the GOP to choose another candidate for the Senate race (though some state legislators floated the utterly undemocratic idea of delaying the election, only to have the idea shut down by the governor); at best, it seems that they could suggest a write-in candidate, such as primary loser Luther Strange — but it seems likely this approach would guarantee a Democratic victory. This likely loss if he drops off the ballot may help explain some of the GOP intransigence on Moore, but not in their favor. The Republicans Party is willing to literally put an accused child molester in office, so long as he's a reliable vote. If the GOP won’t disown Roy Moore, then it would be political malpractice for the Democratic Party not to hang this fake moralizer around the neck of the Party, for the duration of this race, and, God forbid, afterwards, were he to win election to the Senate.
