Taking One For the Team

In a year fraught with sex scandals, sophomoric election jokes about "pulling it off" and "pulling it out", just write themselves...

That's why I will never be anyone serious in politics.

Alabama: Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close

Alabama: An extremely close race is now called for Doug Jones (D).

It takes real effort for a Republican to lose Alabama, but doggone it, Roy Moore managed this difficult task.

Doug Jones is no better than Moore and I'm not celebrating.

I think it's a loss over all that the state was stuck with two such horrific candidates, and one of them is going to a US senator for the next two years, impeding any good that the Republicans may try to accomplish. And he's a rabid pro-abortion advocate, so in my view, also a deeply immoral person.
The only good news here is that the GOP is not stuck with the extremely awkward choice of what to do with Roy Moore, and will not have that legacy hanging over its head two years from now.
Let's hope Republicans learn a lesson from this and will nominate people who are not so repulsive that they turn off more than half of their own party in the deepest of deep red states.

Hypocrisy Rules Supreme

You can't argue for universality of human rights and dignity, bash Islamists for promoting child marriages, and for basically treating women like property (except when they are needed for propaganda), and then go and claim that 40 years ago Alabama culture permitted much older men to molest teenage girls (despite the laws to the contrary) and that it's perfectly ok and not at all creepy. If it's creepy when your political opponent does it, it's creepy when your guy does it as well. Just sayin'.

One of the issues that really bothers me about this whole thing with Moore is how easily the public has created double standards. The same religious Christians who are all up an arms for the horrific Islamist cultures that have no regard for women or for individual rights are completely nonchalant about allegations concerning Moore so long as they can score a political victory. Well, if in your cost-benefit analysis, a 2-year Senate seat outweighs any moral considerations, that's certainly up to you, but you will have lost any right to sit in moral judgment of other people and the nasty or blatantly illegal things that they do. And expect me to question the defenders of Moore every time they express outrage about Hollywood pervs who are accused of doing similar things, which are likewise from long ago and at this point, unprovable. No, I don't expect politicians to be saints. I do expect their supporters to have enough intellectual honesty to hold themselves to the same standards they expect of their opposition.

What Does the Left Get Out of the Roy Moore Fiasco?

Ladies and gents, I bring to you the very obvious outcome of the left's efforts in handing the Ray Moore story.

The issue for the left is not whether Moore is guilty or innocent.

Not whether they will win or lose that one seat (that's not under anyone's direct control).

Not whether, he'll keep on fighting or leave the race. All those are factors, not central issues.

The central issue here is dividing and ridiculing the Republican party, having Republicans go at one and other, and discrediting themselves in a wide variety of ways.

So far, the plan is succeeding.

When You Think You Are Strong, When In Fact, You're Just SHort-Sighted

Democrats are ALWAYS trying to do hit jobs. That's called opposition research. Sometimes it bears out and sometimes it's pure fabrication. That's nasty, but it's politics so there is no excuse not to be prepared and not do your own job in looking at where your candidate might get hit.

And do all of you honestly believe that the Republicans woudn't do oppo research on a candidate and try to bring it up at a convenient time if they could? The better question is why are they so terrible at doing that. Is it laziness? Weakness? Corruption? Lack of access to quality operatives? I don't know. What I do firmly believe that all the people who are more than willing to overlook whatever Roy Moore did just because the Democrats brought it out of the closet at the last minute would do the same thing to the other side in the heartbeat, if only they could. But they can't, so they are doing their party a disservice twice: first, by talking the talk without walking the walk, and second, by failing to distance themselves from known liabilities and therefore opening themselves up to further attacks of the same kind.

I won't be surprised if more of this doesn't come out in a week or two, only much worse and with some awful evidence that will be hard to dispute.

Let's face it, 40 years ago, people did not keep good records. They weren't in the habit of instagramming their every move. There was no Instagram. 20 years from now? The young candidates running in local elections will be inundated with blackmail and revelations. And if we are still stuck in the mindset from 40 years ago 20 years from now, there won't be any elections worth winning left.

Roy Moore's Defense Starts With Roy Moore

1. Roy Moore failed to publicly and unequivocally deny all allegations, including but not limited to accusations of attempted sexual assault, being banned from the mall for being too creepy even for that time and place, and the yearbook.

2. If in doubt, see one. I see no reason to defend someone who refuses to defend himself. Why are you killing yourselves and making yourselves look ridiculous over someone who refuses to simply state "There is not one word of truth in any of this"?

Roy Moore is Not The Hill Worth Dying On

Let me put it this way, whatever you think of cultural norms in Alabama 40 years ago, the bulk of the evidence, Moore's guilt or innocences, who is behind the current revelations, and whether or not it's appropriate to run such candidates, one thing is clear to me:

Moore is not entitled to support of anyone except the people who voted for him. No politician from another jurisdiction "has" to continue supporting somebody with a cloud of attempted sexual assault allegations hanging over his head. And not one conservative must act against his conscience and show support to somebody from another state just to virtue signal their opposition to dirty trickery by the Democrats. And if the v oters in Alabama decide that this guy deserves to be in the Senate, so be it. But he is not entitled to a single colleague's support there if they in good conscience believe that he is a liar and a pervert.

And if he continues tarnishing the brand of the Republican Party, the people who are vigorously supporting him now will have that to content with. If the Party continues to fail to recruit new people because GOP becomes associated with hypocrisy, complete lack of accountability, and lack of good judgment, Republicans will have only themselves to blame. There are many battles to fight against the left. Some Republicans were willing to hang themselves on the hill that was Michael Flynn. We all know how that turned out. Sometimes it's just not worth it, morally or practically. I am not willing to tie my personal reputation to Roy MOore, whom I didn't actually support to begin with, except in a very technical sense as the voters' choice for the general election in Alabama. And the PR winner in this battle is going to be the left anyway. By all means, expose dirty trickery wherever you see it - but only after making sure that you yourself are not going down with the people you are exposing.

Just The Facts, Ma'am

I don't see anyone debating or discrediting the testimony that Moore was banned from the mall in his town for being creepy. Either that is an objective fact, independent of any character witnesses, or it's not. Either he was banned or he wasn't. Should be easy enough to figure out for those who are willing to do so, instead of going in circles debating who would have or should have known what.

Why You Don't Have To Support Moore to Be a Real Conservative

It's astounding to see the very same people (literally) who expressed horror at Donald Trump's character last year, and were distressed that the Republicans chose him as their nominee in the primaries, and were shocked that the Evangelicals and other religious groups would endorse someone like that, the same people who refused to give him full-hearted support even after the nomination... suddenly defend Roy Moore with their dying breath AS IF THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN whatsoever.

Now, don't get me wrong. I've been struggling with this issue myself since the story broke out. Unlike many of Moore's supporters, I never liked the man to begin with, but since this is the candidate Alabama voters have chosen, I was hoping, and could certainly understand, that Moore's conservative colleagues in the Senate would try to make the best of the situation, buddy up with him, and get him to vote for the right things and avoid saying and doing harmful things as much as possible. I would not be happy that he was there at all, but I could live with that outcome. I cannot live with a liar, who makes fools of his own constituents, and who appears to be completely non-chalant about the seriousness of the accusations by his detractors. I will be significantly less diplomatic about it than some people I very much respect were and say as following: sure, the timing MAY very well be entirely political and disruptive. But that does not justify Moore's crimes, if he is guilty of them, and it's certainly does not justify the lying.

And it absolutely does not justify those "conservatives" who are willing to put aside all moral judgment and support Moore EVEN if it turns out that all claims are true and he is indeed a pedophile and a liar. To say that I'm disappointed, not so much in the original Trump supporters, but in the people who did consider character an important issue to selecting a candidate and who now completely destroyed their credibility by trying to find excuses for the inexcusable, is not to say anything. I've already seen a fair number sliding down that slippery slope into blatantly favoring evil, not even the lesser evil, just evil, so long as it's "their" kind of evil, and this further degradation just adds an additional layer of disgust on top of it all. Now, I get if people are genuinely struggling with this issue. I myself expressed grave concerns about the high likelihood of defamation of character, conveniently launched by political operatives and picked up by those who simply dislike Moore.

For that reason, I have a great deal of respect for Steve Deace, who, in a very earnest statement, explained why he himself is struggling with this issue. I myself was not willing to "buy into" (as I was accused of doing) the political machinery behind the latest election-time shenanigans. I wanted to see what would happen next. I was sorely disappointed by Roy Moore's own actions, his loss of credibility on Hannity, and by the bandwagon of apologists, who do not care about truth, righteousness, or even legality of his actions, so long as he "wins" and they get to score points against the left. Once again, my advice to the conservatives: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You might want to reconsider your own choices that keep leading you towards increasingly more impeachable candidates. There is no shortage of staunch conservatives without this kind of baggage. How about, instead of falling for the most shrill, grandiose megalomaniacs that you can find, supporting people with no dark secrets of the sexual crime variety, who will do their job earnestly, and who will not blatantly lie to you about the most basic facts of the situation?

I am further disgusted by the accusations of bad faith and being a tool of the left that are being launched at me now that after a time of carefully monitoring the situation and struggling with various angles of it, i have come to a personal choice that Moore is more likely guilty than not, and that he is almost certainly lying about at least some aspects of this situation. I took heat from the left when I cautioned against jumping at easy political bait and at the gravity of undermining someone's reputation. I am equally willing to take the heat now, because truth to me, matters a lot more than opinions of people on the Internet. I am not willing to make compromises with my own conscience and to support someone who engages in this level of deceit and is either covering up a crime, or is so narcissistic, that even for the sake of clearing his name and helping his party dig itself out of the moral morass, will continue covering up, lying, and equivocating.

I pray and wholeheartedly hope that Moore turns out to be entirely innocent of the heinous accusations against him. However, he disgraced himself on Hannity, and he disgraced himself further by refusing to clear his name and by not calling out to his supporters and cautioning them against their willingness to support criminals. That would have been the right thing to do in this situation. Unlike the many "conservatives" I have encountered, I remain fully confident that the State of Alabama, has, in fact, a number of viable, conservative candidates, who are neither pedophiles nor liars or equivocators, and who would make fine candidates in the event Roy Moore wisely decides to spare us all additional embarrassment and to withdraw. He is now a complete liability to the party, and the best he can do is come clear, apologize, and take his leave. If he stays in the race, somehow manages to win the election (which I doubt), and takes the Senate seat, he will have not only disgraced that institution, but he will be a political loss for conservatives. His vote will be tainted, and he will end up as disservice to his own state.