US: The Roy Moore Mess, by The Wall Street Journal. We mentioned this a few days ago as hinging critically on the truth. Seems that many Republicans are now bailing on him, though that mainly be the RINOs such as those at the WSJ.
A famous country song aptly summed up where the Republicans are with Senate candidate Roy Moore in Alabama: You’ve got to know when to fold ’em.
There is no doubt a sense in which Mr. Moore deserves the opportunity to challenge accusations against him for acts alleged to have happened more than 30 years ago. Though too many women were too easily ignored in the past, we do not want to live in a country or political culture in which every accusation of sexual misconduct is automatically accepted as true. Accusers can be liars too.
But Mr. Moore isn’t in a courtroom today. He’s in the political arena in which a candidate has to maintain a minimal level of public credibility to survive. And his political situation has moved well beyond a more familiar she said/he said predicament.
Several women have made detailed accusations of sexual misconduct against Mr. Moore, and multiple people now say he was known for trolling shopping malls for young girls while in his 30s. Mr. Moore’s public defenses have also been less than convincing, not least that he doesn’t know his latest accuser, though he signed her yearbook.
Mr. Moore’s credibility has fallen below the level of survivability. …
For 25 years Democrats and feminists euphemized and apologized for Bill Clinton, starting with Gennifer Flowers before he was President. Republicans can show their standards are better. …
The RINOs wish this were true:
There is one other obvious loser in this debacle: Former White House aide Steve Bannon. Some have argued that the Bannon insurgency against the Republican “establishment” is in the mode of earlier party challenges led by Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich. This one isn’t close. The populism of Reagan and Mr. Gingrich was always about building the conservative movement into a majority that could govern and change the country.
The Bannonites have given no evidence or argument that they are aiming that high. They want to defeat the existing majority — a conservative majority by any historical standard— mainly to show that they can depose Majority Leader Mitch McC onnell.
They have no discernible governing agenda beyond trade protectionism and slashing immigration, and those often appear to be convictions of convenience. It is hardly a surprise therefore that instead of recruiting talented candidates, Mr. Bannon is collecting cranks and outliers like Roy Moore who, demonstrably, will take the GOP into the minority.
Limbaugh: Moore was a Democrat at time of sexual misconduct allegations, by Brandon Carter.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday criticized Republicans for distancing themselves from Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore, while saying that Moore was a Democrat at the time he allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct with teenage girls.
“Did you know that before 1992, when a lot of this was going on, that Judge Moore was a Democrat?” Limbaugh said on his radio show. “Nobody said a word.”
“When he supposedly was attracted to inappropriately-aged girls — he was a Democrat,” Limbaugh added.
There seems to be a bit of a recent theme about US Democrats and inappropriate sexual behavior — such as Joe Biden.
